Blogging as a business model

The New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle that ana­lyzes why blog­gers get into the busi­ness. More blog­gers are using their sites to earn rev­enue from adver­tis­ing links, pro­mote their prod­ucts and ser­vices, and gain author­ity in their fields of inter­est. As the econ­omy stum­bles, blog­gers face a vari­ety of choices. Should they con­cen­trate on their reg­u­lar jobs and aban­don their blogs? Should they leap full-time into the blo­gos­phere and try to make a liv­ing from the web?

One thing’s for sure: few blog­gers really do a rea­son­able income from their blogs. It is pos­si­ble to make a liv­ing from blog­ging, although it can take years to build enough read­ers and adver­tis­ers to gen­er­ate sus­tain­able rev­enue streams. I men­tioned Perez Hilton on 20 March 2008. His income has increased quite a bit over the last year, although keeps get­ting sued in court over his blog’s con­tent, accord­ing to this Wikipedia article.

Boing­Bo­ing grows

BoingBoing’s four co-editors each have pay­ing writ­ing jobs that they pro­mote heav­ily on Boing­Bo­ing. For years, the web site has posted weird news items focused on tech­nol­ogy and the Inter­net. Over time, the blog became one of the most pop­u­lar sites of its kind on the Inter­net. Accord­ing to an arti­cle on Wikipedia, Boing­Bo­ing added a busi­ness man­ager in 2004 to admin­is­ter the site’s operations.

Adver­tis­ing was added to the site and its RSS feeds soon after­wards, to defray the site’s band­width charges. Pop­u­lar web sites can rack up a large bill for their Inter­net con­nec­tion. Adding ads to the site’s pages and over­all design is a key suc­cess factor.

In the last few months, BoingBoing’s web site has been redesigned to include dis­cus­sion threads and a sub­sidiary blog focused on elec­tronic gad­gets. The core writ­ers still post arti­cles every day, but they have brought in more peo­ple to admin­is­ter the site and run the site’s dis­cus­sion forums. Honda has signed on as a spon­sor. There’s also a video site, although BoingBoing’s writ­ers seem stiff and uncom­fort­able in front of the cam­era. Per­haps they will get bet­ter over time, as they build an inde­pen­dent media empire from their quirky web site.

A uni­form approach

Paul Lukas’ Uni Watch is a good exam­ple of how to build income from a blog. Paul is a free­lance jour­nal­ist who has appeared in the New York times. His blog is an obses­sive study of sports uni­forms. Paul posts one arti­cle each day, with a long trail of links and mis­cel­la­neous items. By the end of the day, users have posted at least a hun­dred com­ments as they debate the top­ics of the day.

The blog had been funded by adver­tis­ing links and user mem­ber­ships. A basic mem­ber­ship included a uniform-themed wal­let card, while more expen­sive pack­ages included a cus­tom designed logo and an inter­view posted to the blog.

A few days ago, Paul announced that ESPN had picked him up as a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor. Paul had been writ­ing free­lance arti­cles for ESPN’s Page 2 web site. He had already hired an intern a few months ago to man­age the dis­cus­sion boards and post arti­cles on the week­ends. Paul has decided he can scale back the blog mem­ber­ship pro­gram to the basic level, now that ESPN is sup­port­ing him. After almost 2 years of blog­ging, he can take a vaca­tion or two with­out shut­ting down the blog completely.

Tagged as: blog, business_model, key-success-factors, revenue, sports, writing