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."

Comments

Why TF did I go to school?

[Enigma_Man]

And pay umpteen-thousand dollars for an engineering education, just so I could make less money than a manager at McDonalds :(

Anybody else depressed that people make a lot of money doing stupid things?

-Jesse

Re:Why TF did I go to school?

[Iriel]

Then again, I remember reading an article in WIRED about a year ago that mentioned that the vast majority of pro-bloggers don't make enough to even live off of at low class level. I have a vague feeling that about the only people making the real money off of this aren't the actual bloggers themselves but the owners of site like (I really don't know which ones bring in the most money) LiveJournal, Gizmodo, Wonkette and such. If you ask me, I think the webmasters controlling the blogs are raking in the real cash on this gig.

I could be wrong, so please don't correct me with a torch, but from the stats I've seen, being a blogger is no replacement for your day job.

Re:Why TF did I go to school?

[ThaFooz]

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.

Amen to that. I'm reminded of a David Cross bit - for anybody that needs to remember that most dumb/untalented people do in fact fail, buy yourself a plane ticket to Los Angeles and just sit on a bench on Holywood Blvd. for a little while. No where else in the world can you see so many delusional people who spent everything to get there, thinking that they're going to be 'the next big thing', only to be chewed up and spit out by the city a few months later.

Re:Why TF did I go to school?

[Eric Giguere]

Most people don't realize how little authors make on their books. For a non-fiction, you're usually talking 10% of the net (wholesale) cover price. (For fiction, it's usually a smaller percentage of the cover price, which generally works out to about the same.) So for an average $40 tech book, the author might be getting 10% of $24, i.e. a couple bucks per book. If you only sell 5,000 books total (very common) then you can see that the numbers don't amount to much.

This is why more and more authors are starting to publish their books electronically as e-books, often becoming their own publishers. It's very similar to the way that musicians are exploring electronic distribution avenues for their work. But it's still an immature, emerging distribution model for both kinds of artists.

Eric
(who nevertheless has a conventional printed book to flog -- you can always hope!)

Re:Why TF did I go to school?

[(1 -sqrt(5))*(2**-1)]

I read that as "some people are born lucky..."

There's that classic line from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night:

[B]ut be not afraid of greatness: some
are born great, some achieve greatness, and some
have greatness thrust upon 'em.

Now, if you mean to say that Gates' fantastic genes propelled him forward, I'm with you; if, on the other hand, you're merely interested in class-based agitation, I'd urge you to rethink your position.

Another Bubble

[diogenesx]

Is this just another Internet Bubble? I'd have to say that I feel these services are a bit overvalued. Are blogs really a trend or just a fad?

Riches vs. Reality (Power Law Distirbutions)

[G4from128k]

I'd bet that blogger revenues follow a nasty powerlaw distribution. For every blogger making $400,000 a year, there are 10 making $40,000, for every blogger making $40,000/yr, there are 10 making only $4,000, and so on. Or, for every blogger making $400k, there are 1000 making $400/year. (I don't have hard data on this. It may not be a 10:1 ratio it could be better or it could be worse)

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. As with any fame driven industry, if a person thinks that they can be one of the top 10 blogs in the entire world, then they should go for it. If they can't be top 10, then they should NOT quit their day job.

Honestly confused:

[grasshoppa]

What is it about blogs? I can see why people write them, it's a form of therapy much in the same vein as giving confession ( for you catholic types out there ). It's a release, a way to understand the things in your life and gain some control over them.

But who reads these things? Why are they so popular? I tried reading a few, including our resident's celebrity's, and I can't see the appeal to them for the reader ( sorry Clever ). I have enough going on in my life that I don't need to read about someone else's problems. And, quite frankly, after reading a few of those blogs, you all lead boring lives ( unless you are the blogging whore, in which case...call me ).

So why do you folks read these things? And how in gods' name are they so profitable?

Re:Honestly confused:

[William_Lee]

The type of blogging you're referring to is just one of many possibilities. Those blogs are often egotistic, tired windows into an uninteresting life. The blogosphere is a big place. There are a ton of high quality blogs written by subject matter experts that are updated on a regular basis for a wide variety of topics. Some of these are both well written and often incredibly informative. I often scan a list of ones related to technology, investing/trading, books/publishing, wine, etc. The signal to noise ratio may tend toward the low side, but there are many interesting areas to explore in blogs. The idea of a blog as a personal diary of life's travails is one tiny piece of what they actually are.

Personal experience with AdSense revenue

[RebrandSoftware]

I run a small software company, and our main customers are webmasters who want to sell their own software. A very niche market (but a lot of fun!).

About a year ago I signed up with Google AdSense to offset advertising costs from Google AdWords and to give some value to traffic that would otherwise visit the site without purchasing anything.

The traffic isn't particularly heavy since it's such a niche market. However, I still manage to make about $60-$100 per month with Adsense.

Obviously, that's not nearly enough to live on. However, I can see how a blog has qualities that would make it very profitable.

For example, a blog has constantly changing content that grows every day. Each time there is a new entry it creates an opportunity for more links in from search engines. Those entries continue to be indexed by search engines long after they're written, so each day the blog has more and more potential.

Because blogs are always changing they have the potential for daily visits from dedicated readers, and those readers have an incentive to support the blog by visiting it's advertisers.

If a blogger were to choose subjects based on high-value keywords (which they could research by signing up for Google AdWords but not actually purchasing advertising) they could expect at least a few dollars per click.

I can definitely see the potential in blogs.

Now, please excuse me, I'm off to start my blog about high quality diamonds.

6 Figure Salaries?

[Chunni Babu]

Nobody earns 6 fig salary writing blogs dude. What do you think adsense ads are enough to pull this kind of salary? I think this is a misinformation someone has spread to create a hype around blogs. BTW this is what blogsinc, the company that is being sold, paid some of the writers - http://www.blogherald.com/2005/08/26/weblogs-inc-p ay-rates-revealed-by-disgruntled-potential-recruit

Relative incomes

[SeanDuggan]

Similarly, very few actors make enough money to live off. Very few professional athletes make enough money to live off. *shrug* It's the exceptions that people remember. Heck, in his book, If Chins Could Kill, Bruce Campbell admits that his average annual income from acting is less than $40,000, which many people consider to be standard wage slave income. And he's a fairly well known actor, too...

Och, and don't even get me on the subject of people who think primary school teachers are overpaid...

Zonk and blogging stories

[The Hobo]

YAZBS (Yet Another Zonk Blogging Story)

Look for the magic word in the title/summary/links:
One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen

There's probably more, but there's definitely a trend: If you want a story posted on Slashdot, find (or in some cases, make up) blog-related "news" while Zonk is on duty

Re:Blog Bubble Not To Pop

[budgenator]

I don't think that everyone is delusional and thinks that just by publishing something about anything that you'll find a market and be rolling in cash somewhere down the line
I do somehow, I got the feeling that this was a MLM scheme, but I was wrong. I've been in Amway, and yes I lost some money, $100.00 to be exact, and that was completely due to my poor judgement, not Amway. So I am a bit sensitive to scheming, so what the scheme;

1. Rowse is a legit blogger who finaly manage to get his blog on /.'s front page and profits,
2. Most likely the Rowse is an astroturfer for chitika and his results are best-of-breed and not typical,
3. Rowse is an amalgam of best-of-breed and represents peak one-time earnings presented as possible from a company worried about AOL and Google aquiring their revenue stream and saw a chance to get /.ed for profit,
4. Rowse is part of a click-ring of blogers who click each other's ads in a variation of a kiting scheme and saw /.ing as a means to camofludge their activites,

Take your pick.
The financial risk of trying this is fairly low, so I guess no harm, no foul. Now there are always people who will think that money will just jump into their pockets; these people are usualy disapointed; you want to make money, you have to work or sell.