“If folks focus in on a niche and own it there is a good chance they could make half a living from blogging.”
So says Jason Calacanis in an email debate with Alan Meckler over at the WSJ piece, Can Bloggers Make Money?
Alan Meckler writes…
“Blogs are really diaries or microcosms of what is happening in millions of ways in daily life — ranging from special interests to business specialties to whatever. Obviously there is money to be made with blogs, but very, very few will bring in more than a few hundred dollars per year.”
I still say it’s similar to playing sports professionally. Millions do it for enjoyment, and don’t expect (or particularly want) to get anything more from it than a sense of achievement, while only a relative few take it far enough to make it their career.
TDH said on April 19, 2006 @ 5:40 pm...
That’s a pretty good anology, comparing blogs to sports. Read the article this morning, a good read but it’s still two somewhat “exteme” ends and I’d think everything’ll end up somewhere in the middle.
Barry Bell (Profile) said on April 19, 2006 @ 11:34 pm...
Yep. I’d still like to think that the potential to turn blogging into a career is there for anyone who really puts their mind to it.
But one of the biggest obstacles to overcome are the people who still think of blogs as being nothing but personal online diaries. Calacanis does a brilliant preaching job there, but he can’t realistically take on the world.
TDH said on April 20, 2006 @ 4:38 am...
I agree. That seems still to be the overall view of blogs. Like it’s the reloads of the 90’s all over again, but with a new name. Granted, there are a lot of diary-type blogs out there but how you manage to keep a blind-eye to all the professional bloggers and their niches are beyond me. Take Engadget for example - it could just as well be a regular gadget site but the blog format works very well for it. But if someone tags it as a blog “on the outside” it will be frowned upon.
Ridiculous. Content is king, presentation is peasant. When will people get it?
Barry Bell (Profile) said on April 20, 2006 @ 8:20 am...
Maybe if they’d never been called ‘blogs’ in the first place (and were actually called something like ‘online magazines’, for example) then there’d probably be more opportunities to make some money.
To most people, the word ‘blog’ is just a bit too geeky and that turns many of ‘em off.
Now that’s OK if your audience is mainly other bloggers and geeks (which is why gadget blogs are often more successful than other topics), but if you’re trying to tap into a more mainstream audience (like the average person in the street where I live) and also cover ‘offline’ topics like crafts and maybe sports, then I think you’re going to run into problems - simply because a blog is called a blog.
TDH said on April 20, 2006 @ 8:21 am...
My thought exactly.