Slashdot Mirror
Blog Network to Sell For $20 Million Plus
Victor Cheng writes "Blogs are big money. The Weblogs Inc Network is apparently about to be sold for over $20 million to AOL, an individual blogger is making over $400,000 per year from his living room, a blogger writing about shoes is claiming a six figure income and blog networks are starting every second day with hopes of making it big. It looks like it might be time to dust off the old blogspot blog again."
Today they're a fad. 10 to 20 years from now we can look back and call it a trend.
When it started, Amazon.com was part of the WWW fad, they're just the 5% that stayed around long enough to be a trend.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Somehow I doubt the figures quoted. I've been running a journal at http://sumdog.com/ since 2001 (before everyone called them blogs) and have been running google ads since January and have made $29 so far.
Ads aren't worth a whole lot. If you choose to do your own advertising and not use services like google ad words, you can probably do much better, but they're still not worth much. I suspect many of these people are selling merchandise, promoting certain businesses and have several forms of revenue.
Looking at cartoon sites, the Brothers Chap who run homestarrunner.com current make enough money off all their merchandise to fully support themselves. Hell I even own a StrongBad poster.
You can support yourself off a blog, but it's rare. It requires the type of site status as homestarrunner, the onion or maddox...or possibly Wifey's World or Heather's I Deep Throat.
It may just be me, but does anyone else lump these "I make huge bank with my blog" stories up there with those "get-rich quick" schemes on late-night TV, by those seedy looking guys with wet spiky hair, wearing golf shirts and khaki shorts, sitting in canvas director's chairs?
/rolls eyes
Some guy claims he makes $400k, so Hmmm.....I guess he does, case closed?
VOTE!
I am pro-lifechoice.
To those of you who think blogs are just junk, you don't know what you're talking about.
There are junk blogs (like those countless BS myspace ones) and there are awesome ones. Slashdot is a great one. Gizmodo is another. "Blog" is just a new way of creating articles, in which anyone can now do online easily.
I remember a few years back there was this newsletter that this one guy would publish once every week. It was really great because the guy would talk about new webmaster tricks submitted to him, or other ramblings about that particular niche. I would wait in anticipation for every new issue that comes out. It's not readily evident, but that was a really early version of blogging, just done in a more manual way.
Don't just quickly dismiss the whole concept of blogs.
eTrade SUCKS
Remember that success is fleeting....
$400,000(this year)/40(working years) = $10000/yr, which is probably less than you make as an engineer.
I can stay home and write stupid shit that nobody cares about, so where's my six figure salary?
I think the money comes when one writes stupid shit that people do care about.
I am not sure why this is hard to understand. Your comment could also apply to novelists, and in fact the ratio of six figure salary earners to everybody else is probably much the same in that profession.
I wouldn't get too depressed. Ever since I started my first high-school job (as a restaurant dishwasher over 20 years go), I have heard hundreds of stories about people that made alot of money doing stupid things. In spite of these stories, you just have to remind yourself that there are millions of people that lost their shirts, thinking that stupid things would make them rich, quick.
You are better off, in the long run, with an education. With a degree, if nothing else, you can always end up with a good job, when your latest get-rich-quick scheme fails.
No, I haven't read the linked article but just by reading the posting I can see/hear it now: "Hey honey, why don't I start a blog so I too can make X thousands of dollars a year. That way I can quit my crappy job and we can live like royalty."
Just because one person claims that they are making X thousands of dollars does not mean you or I will. These claims remind me of those real estate scammercials where they insist that for only $200 (or whatever amount) you too can live the life you've already wanted by buying houses for no money down.
Sure, one or two people live in a market where they could flip a house and make some money but the vast, vast, VAST majority either barely break even or lose money on their deals.
Same with blogs.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The point: I'd bet that that only a dozen or so bloggers make a decent income, thousands make a little money and millions make nothing from their blogs.
Personally, I shy away from any "blogger" that is doing it professionally. The power of "bloggers" stems from their brtual honesty and their lack of pays offs (in my mind at least). The second someone is paid to do their hobby a couple of negative things happen:
1. They feel inclined to report on something to benefit those that are paying them for fear of losing the stream of money.
2. They get bored w/the job because they are now getting paid for what was once their hobby that they loved.
3. They overdo it to make more revenue.
I write about stupid shit and post it to my website for myself and my friends. Other people do happen along and read it from time to time and I hope that they see it's just for my own personal enjoyment. There's nothing behind it except what I felt at the time. I have no financially motivated agendas to rate one opinion over another.
When you start doing that, your reputation suffers.
I have absolutely nothing to back this up, but I wouldn't be suprised if the percent of bloggers that actually make 6 figure salaries is probably similar to the percentage of "higher educated" (read college+) people who make 7 figure+ salaries.
It's just the same as always. Some people get are lucky. Some people are extraordinary. Some people are just really good at what they do and therefore people will pay them for it.
Remember, the wealthiest man in the world dropped out of college.
Just like writing novels, then. Very, very few people make enough money from writing e.g. fiction to live off.
qntm.org
Why do so many around here act like "blogs" are some despised world totally different from the rarified circles that Slashdot users travel in? What the hell is Slashdot if not a blog shared by Taco and the other editors, that (like most blogs!) allows the general public to post comments?
The articles are dated, the newest ones appear at the top, they have permalinks, you can subscribe to it via RSS. It's a f**king blog!
If you hate Blogs the way some people seem to hate Emo*, then why are you using Slashdot?
* I don't really know what Emo is, so I neither love nor hate it.
where there's fish, there's cats
Actually, with $5M and a measely 3% annual rate of return would give you $150k/year. Everything you don't spend, let it roll over.
If you can't live on $150k/year with one kid, you have bigger problems.
Remember, the wealthiest man in the world (William Henry Gates III) had already-rich parents (his dad was a high-paid corporate attorney and his mom sat on the board of a number of corporations such as Berkshire Hathaway). He attended Seattle's most prestigious prep school, and the only reason he dropped out of Harvard was to pursue his softare business. The guy is neither stupid nor of humble roots.
So when you say some people get lucky, I read that as "some people are born lucky..."
If mumsie and daddy can afford to send you to all the best schools and provide you with a comfortable lifestyle where your primary concerns can stretch beyond merely surviving, you have much more time to, oh, I don't know, dink around with computers. I love a good Horatio Alger, up-by-the-bootstraps story as much as the next guy, but the fact is that if you are born wealthy, you already have a head start on all the others in the race to the top.