Brian Chin is a Blogger for the Seattle Post Intelligencer, and covered the Blog Business Summit for the paper. His post event review is here.
Brian commented that “There are many ways that blogs can help build a business — but building a business out of a blog is another matter.”
While it may not be easy to get rich, people are making big money blogging. According to Churbuck.com, John Batelle is likely “raking in $30,000 to $50,000 a month” from his Searchblog. The entrepreneurial blog is a reality, and is poised to take off as newsreaders spike in usage. These success stories are the type of tales that the Blog Business Summit wants to hear (and help create!)
The business model for the Web was similarly “elusive” in 1994, but the true believers cashed in anyway. Just because you can’t see the train yet doesn’t mean it’s not coming. I think we can hear that whistle off in the distance. A main theme that drove the creation of the Seattle event was “it’s coming, get ready.” Hmmm–maybe it’s already here…
Let us know where we should do the next Summit, tell us your favorite (and not-so favorite) cities. If you take the time to fill us in, you’ll get a discounted pass to the next show.
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Paul Scrivens 02.02.05 at 5:52 pm
I am sure I am missing something here, but looking at Batelle’s Searchblog I am only seeing 2 Google Ads and a sponsored link. If he is making $30k from that then there is a secret that he needs to keep to his grave. I have no doubt that he pulls a lot of traffic, but pulling enough to make that money off of 2 ads seems a bit unrealistic.
-b- 02.02.05 at 6:29 pm
And a huge gap in the estimates. I don’t know how credible that post is, but do know money is being made by Gawker, with their Sony deal.
Chris 02.02.05 at 7:21 pm
You should consider Dallas as a possible site. Austin is a great city, but the air service in and out of Dallas is far better. There are a lot of direct flights from all over the country. The Gaylord Texan near DFW is a great meeting place.
David Churbuck 02.02.05 at 7:30 pm
Correction, I’m not “reporting” that Batelle’s Searchblog is raking in $35,000 to $50,000 and nor did I use the term “likely”. I passed along a specious piece of off-hand gossip and contrasted it to another’s blogger’s first-hand claim that he did $2,500 last month off of AdSense and BlogAds — with as much prominence and traffic as Searchblog.
My bad for publishing a stupid second-hand claim and not couching it in incredulity or simply asking John for the number. While I hope that Searchblog and other excellent blogs can attract that kind of financial support, for now the high-end of the blog sponsorship side appears to be Sony’s sponsorshop of LifeHacker.
As one cynic said when told of online revenue claims “Cut em all in half. And then cut em half again.”
Blanket sponsorships such as Sony’s have always been the big ticket for any online publisher (I know, I introduced the model at Forbes.com in 1995 and we went profitable early on sponsorships, not banners which were the prevailing ad unit.) Selling them requires agency relationships, excellent traffic reporting, and a professional ad sales staff. Collecting pennies off of commerce affiliates, Amazon, CafePress, banner networks, AdSense, BlogAds, AdBrite, etc. etc. can add up, but in the end, that’s what it’s going to be, pennies.
-b- 02.02.05 at 8:37 pm
Thanks for responding. Honestly, I was like, now who’s Churbuck and where did he gets this info and how credible is it? I didn’t find an about and was like, hmm? Then I found your bio and the post made more sense.
After talking to many after the summit, they were lost on making money with adwords and don’t really care about that. What they want to do is target a specific market with a blog and talk to them, much like Fastlane does. That’s not everyone, but it’s really odd for me to have lived dotcoms when it was all clickthroughs and hear those discussions again. I asked Pete Blackshaw from Intelliseek during his session for numbers on blog ad clickthroughs. The session was over and he didn’t have time to respond, but I don’t think he had them.
I may have missed something, but I’m sure that a few years ago, advertisers finally realized that ads weren’t about clickthrough, but brand and impressions. As I asked, “does anyone visiting a Weblogs Inc site actually click on a University of Phoenix ad?” People definitely click on adwords on google, I’ve got proof of that on my product site and from my budget v impressions v clicks, there has to be a lot lotta clicking for anyone to be making big, big money.
Sony is targeting a specific demographic and sounds like good move, not to mention that it was announced what they were doing. Culturally, and an aside, but I wondered when will the blogosphere stop trying to prove itself. Is a 25K per month budget news anywhere else, besides to us, talking to ourselves in this sphere?
David Churbuck 02.03.05 at 10:30 am
b
Yup, a $25,000 sponsorship is small beer anywhere else but Blogistan.
-b- 02.04.05 at 5:53 pm
Agreed, but it’s certainly good for the blogging economy. And as more blogs get published, someone is going to have to write for all of them. I hope they get paid good money.
Heather D 02.10.05 at 7:13 pm
Why not try a blogging conference in the Kansas City Metro area, like Lawrence? I mean being a college town and knowing a lot of self-employed people, I really feel it would be a huge success!