How do bloggers make money?

Hotsauce84

Not trying to get into anybody's business, but I've always wondered this. I've heard about payola in music blogs and I'm sure it actually exists in some form (not just in music blogs), but that can't be steady income, right? I know Regretsy is extremely popular now with a book deal and all, but how do you get to that point? I'm not sure a book deal like that is even THAT lucrative. I figure advertising helps a lot, but then I see sites like MeInMyPlace (why the #$%^ didn't I come up with that?!) where dude is traveling all over the place taking pics of purdy ladies (that I presume he pays) but his site has no advertising whatsoever.

Not a big deal and none of my biz, just curious.

street_muzik

I've come across a lot of payola situations promoting my artists. It's kinda bullshit imo but as an artist, you gotta do what you gotta do to get up. Promotion costs money. I haven't paid any out but I have artists considering. That's on them.

edit

I guess a blogger can sell weed on the side but these days you get paid better at Starbucks.

SPlDEY

Shit, If you can get that money. Shut your mouth, and don't tell nobody.

- spidey

Almond

There are several ways for bloggers to make money. I would say the most common and "legit" way is through advertising on the blog page. If you have a blog (such as Blogger or Blogspot), you can opt to have an ad appear through Google's Ad Sense program on your page. You get a fraction of a cent for each click that a site visitor makes on an ad (for example, if you click on the American Apparel ads on the Sartorialist blog). If you or someone else click on your own ad too many times, your Ad Sense account will get cancelled due to abuse of the tool. Ad Sense is the program that Youtube partners make money from. That's why some Youtubers have ads on their page and at the beginning of videos, while others do not. It takes a pretty large subscriber/reader/viewer base to make a lot of money, but popular bloggers like Shane Dawson have pretty much made a lucrative living out of it.

Sometimes bloggers are sent items by companies for consideration. This can be music-related, of course, and the issue of payola has already been discussed above. But this can also be for products such as electronics, clothing, etc.

The issue of sponsored blogging has gotten complex. On Youtube, for instance, many popular video bloggers get sent items by companies and get paid to review them or simply wear a t-shirt and have a link to an online store in the information box. Many video bloggers were being paid to review clothing, beauty products, etc. and if they got found out, viewers got pretty heated about their favorite bloggers being paid to put up positive reviews about products they might not otherwise use. Now FTC laws require bloggers to disclose whether they received sponsorship or a free product.
http://ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm

Really quite fascinating, but I'm pretty nerdy and follow a handful of bloggers myself.

mylatency

Kottke tried it:

http://wurk.net/2006/02/24/has-kottke-singlehandedly-destroyed-an-entire-blogging-business-model/

mannybolone

I've chatted about this issue with a variety of different bloggers over the years and the main conclusion is that whatever money there is to be made by an individual (i.e. you're not working for a larger site/company) is fairly piecemeal. It's good for nickel and dime money, but it'd be very hard to support oneself in any reasonable way. Ad money, as Almond suggests, can bring in some money but "results vary" and usually, you're not talking more than a few hundred, if even that.

The idea of reader sponsorship is interesting and I disagree that Kottle killed it (as per that other article's suggestion) but the problem here is developing a sustainable, *stable* model. If you look at the kind of challenges that, say, public/community/college radio has with fund drives, you can imagine the same issue as applied to blogging except, in this case, the amount of competitors willing to do the same shit for free is overwhelming. You'd have to be providing a very particular service to your readers to be able to rely on subscriptions with any hope for a consistent income stream.

One last wrinkle: most metrics suggest blogging has already passed peak capacity and that, from here on out, it will be an outlet on the wane. Not like it's going to disappear overnight but rather, the desire to provide electronic content has been replaced by any number of other outlets, especially Twitter and Facebook. The real question is not "how can you make money blogging" but "how can you make money via content creation" which may or may not have anything to do with conventional blogs at all.

Mr_Lee_PHD

In terms of making money, blogging certainly doesn't rake in as much money as sites like LOLcats and failblog.

Entertainment's where its at.

herbacios tweed

I remember the citizen police getting asshurt when a number of music bloggers were given free Zunes and flown out to the MSFT offices. Since when is schlepping out to a corporate campus halfway across the country some great gift?

Unknown

http://i.stuff.co.nz/the-press/technology/2721898/Becoming-a-famous-blogger-a-recipe-at-a-time