Saturday, October 04, 2008
Making Money from Blogging
Today I will be writing a 2,000 word article for the British Journalism Review on the subject of whether anyone in this country could ever earn a living from blogging. Does anyone ever start a blog with the intention of making money from it? How do bloggers make money from blogging? If you fancy giving me a hand, leave some suggestions in the comments!
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21 comments:
I don't think anyone could set out purey to make money and succeed. I think most people blog for a combination of reasons, of which generating money may be one. Many just want a platform to share their views and enjoy writing about certain subjects. For instance I enjoy writing about politics so my blog itchythinking.blogspot.com (shameless plug) gives me a way to do it and build up a back catalogue as it were of writing. If blogs are good and interesting, money often stems from that. But setting out with that as the sole intention is very high risk and likely to fail
Thanks !
Make Money from picture.
http://earn-money-on.blogspot.com/
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maybe you should write to tom Harris before you start this article.
If a blog supports an interest or pastime that has the potential to make money, then if the blog raises one's profile, good things will ensue. But it's hard to show cause and effect.
I'm a crime writer and since I started blogging (every day) a year ago, my profile and sales have increased and I've won a major award for the first time. I don't attribute this mainly to the blog, but I do think the blog creates increased interest and profile, and it must be helpful.
I think there is a marked difference between here and the US when it comes to this issue...i would say it's much harder to make money out of a blog over here though I do feel people do set them up sometimes with that intention...
In general I think the US is streets ahead of the UK in terms of blogging culture....espeically when it comes to politics...
I started my (food) blog when I was working in educational publishing and loathing it. At the time, I intended that the blog should work as a portfolio for a kind of writing I very much wanted to do professionally. It's done its job brilliantly - I left my job and went freelance, and I now have some huge clients including the National Geographic and Penguin. There's absolutely no way I could have got the exposure I needed to find work with them without the blog - many of my clients have approached me directly after having read it. Which is just as well, because I'm rubbish at networking in the old-fashioned way.
Does anyone ever start a blog with the intention of making money from it?
I certainly did not. And so far, I'm not. :o)
How do bloggers make money from blogging?
I'm sorry, I haven't a clue.
I'm not sure if the playfield is big enough to generate enough money from purely from selling adspace on blogs, you have to sell something else too, which will detract from whether you can class it as 'money from blogging'.
For example if you're in a band and you have a really popular website and you sell CDs on the website, thats not making money from blogging, thats just using the blog to make money from selling CDs.
Girl with a one track mind is a bit of a UK blogging success story http://girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/
But I think it was the book of the blog that made money rather than the blog.
There's U-Handbag too http://u-handbag.typepad.com/ which is the blog of a handbag making supplier, they use the blog to bring people to the shop or buy their stuff online.
Send an invoice, payable within 30 days, to every MSM outlet that rips off your blog for content.
If they haven't paid in 30 days, sell the debt to bailiffs.
You could be a wealthy man by Christmas
I blog because I hate people.
Back in 2003 - 2004 I started to blog for commercial reasons - my best month of adsense earnings was Jan 2004 - $591.28. All for ten minutes work a day!
I was in a specialist computing field, skimming any relevant news articles and blogging them. Of course spam bots now do it so I think the market has been destroyed.
But I liked it so much I continued to blog for personal pleasure and the ads cover the costs and that is about it now.
personally i think the only way you could make a living from blogging is if you wrote such a successful one that you got invited to write columns for the msm, appear on TV as a panellist, etc etc.
so in that sense you can't make money purely from blogging, but you could probably do so if you counted all the other work coming in as a result of it.
There is downstream benefit of course. After 8 years and 1.2 million hits, I developed a style, through constantly belting out a few thousand words a week, and was able to bid for and win writing work (Shameless plug appearing) SUCH AS THIS: http://www.ovalbooks.com/bluff/LifeCoaching.html
'Content is king' is one of the great blogging catchphrases.
I started Nick R Thomas - A Public Speaker's Blog with 3 aims:
Acknowledge, advise and advertise.
i.e. acknowledge the hospitality and appreciation from the audiences I speak to
advise other speakers by passing on presentation skills tips and, of course,
advertise my services as a speaker, speechwriter/comedy writer and coach.
Over 14 months it has certainly brought in some work. As for adsense revenue, well, that's a much slower process...
Boost readership with shameless plugging on other peoples' message boards. I've just checked out Bill's (first poston this topic), and discovered others I read this way (Lakelander, Letters from a Tory, Old Holborn etc). The interesting ones I keep going back to.
Take a look at these two Iain :)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/22/technorati-survey-says-the-average-blog-makes-6000-a-year/
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/09/22/10-innovative-blog-business-models/
Hope this helps! :)
John
ask Wife in the North , she ahs made money by publishing her book taken from her Blog
I think the blog opens doors, rather than earns money itself.I suspect blogging is the way to sell innovative ideas and people these days- the MSM is slow and conservative and bloggers beat them hands down for speed and immediacy.
I'd love to give you a hand job Iain.
I doubt you could make a fortune, or even a living, from a political blog directly, but in your case it can certainly serve as a gateway into other things - television appearances, newspaper columns, books, etc.
Blogs on other topics can make fortunes, i.e. last week bankaholic.com was sold for $15m, icanhazcheezeburger.com was sold for a few million, etc.
i hope you don't just copy and paste this article about US blogging and replace $ for £!!
http://www.slate.com/id/2201325/?from=rss
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