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September 19, 2004
Media Watch: Can bloggers make money?
....yes, but not very much
That seems to be a fairly typical summary of recent articles by AP and others in the mainstream press. The news stories did find some bloggers making a few hundred dollars per month, but not enough to give up a day job, a situation unlikely to change. The subtext in a lot of the coverage was that blogging can't, and will not be able provide a living for bloggers. (Whew, the amateur hordes will never be able to scale the ramparts of professional journalism.)
In my opinion, the question should be turned around. Are the mainstream media companies making money? Last time I looked, there was a tremendous amount of red ink pouring from newspaper and magazine publishing companies, and layoffs continue...
...Newspaper publishers are waiting for advertising to come back, but it's clear that it won't, at least not in the same way. I think the prospects for online media are better than they have been in nearly five years, and there is a strong upward trend.
At least the bloggers are making a living, most have day jobs and they make some pocket money on their web sites. The journalists interviewing the bloggers are probably not making money for their media organizations.
In fact, if they were turned lose, as Chris Nolan (ChrisNolan.com) likes to put it, as "stand alone journalists," many mainstream journalists would probably find it hard to capture the sizable readership that many bloggers have built up.
The problem is that media business models in general, are broken or poor performing.
Posted by foremski at September 19, 2004 01:15 PM
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