Excellent article in SFGate entitled Yes, some blogs are profitable, very profitable. The article talks about how a number of highly profitable blogs on the Internet have really started out as a personal initiative, little more than a hobby or a curiosity. He cites Techcruch as an example of a blog that started out as a hobby and is today making around $240,000 a month in direct sales.
My favourite part of the article is this:
The blogging world has tremendous strengths – original voices, provocative opinions, imagination and intimate knowledge of a variety of subjects. But it is also an industry struggling to mature, many observers argue. They say blogging companies must overcome the industry’s reputation as a sort of digital Wild West where anything goes, and confront such questions as conflicts of interest, product hype, bias and low standards of accuracy.
It sums up the current state of play around the blogging world at this point in time. We’re currently at an interesting turning point, where the world is noticing blogs. I remember a point in time around 10-15 years ago where the Internet was no longer the realm of geeks and hackers, but come to the forefront of everyone’s lives and I’m working if blogs are approaching this point now. Did you know, for example, that 50% of UK companies undertake some form of blogging?
If you want to try your hand at it, blogging is available to everyone nowadays. You can set up an account on WordPress.com or Blogger, or even on our own local WorkConnexions and give it a try, see if it sticks. Who knows, this time next year I might be reading YOUR blog …
I think blogging companies will just get smaller and smaller (and more focused). One person can basically become a mini-journalist for no costs whatsoever and make as good a living as they would have writing for a newspaper or magazine.