The New York Magazine has posted a pretty long article titled Blogs to Riches – The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom.
The title is pretty descriptive of what the article sets out to do.
I found the section on Peter Rojas of Engadget mildly interesting as a story of a blogger who has ridden the wave pretty well and who says that he ‘doesn’t need to work anymore’ as a result. Of course he is – working 80 hours weeks illustrating one of my mantras – ‘ProBlogging is a lot of hard work’.
They take a look at different models/approaches to blogging for an income:
- The Accidental Tourist – ‘A lone writer who starts a blog as a mere hobby but then wakes up one day to realize his audience is now as big as a small city newspaper.’ (example – Boing Boing)
- The Record Label Approach – ‘Crank out dozens and dozens of sites and hope that one or two will become hits.’ (example – WIN)
- Boutique Approach – ‘a publisher who crafts individual blogs the way Condé Nast crafts magazines—each one carefully aimed at some ineffable, deluxe readership.’ (example – Gawker)
The article is rounded out with a look at the concept of the ‘A-list’ and the way blogs quickly come and go from it….. yadayadayada…
I got bored with the article by this point :-)
Overall it’s an article that I’m sure will get some people talking and a lot of incoming links – but I didn’t find much in it that we’ve not already talked to death already.
found via Steve Rubel
Good article.
I guess for most of us homegrown blogger types, we’re the boutique shops. I mean, at least I am.
I wouldn’t have the attention span necessary to shotgun out multiple blogs. I mean, how many blogs can I write about getting laid?!
I’ve actually tried the record-label (shotgun) approach with some success. After 30 posts or so I can kinda tell what needs to be abandoned and what deserves my time. But still I’ve found that a couple of my abandoned blogs with just a few posts actually brought in plenty of revenue after a few months and I was able to re-address them. I wouldn’t have discovered that market if I hadn’t tried enough options.
I am trying a mix between Record Label and Boutique approach.
I found article interesting in the sense that it presents a broad picture. And then, it’s a magazine article, which is as such different than a post on the blog specialised for the topic.
Dominant mode?
…from the article:
No one knows this better than Elizabeth Spiers, the original Gawker girl. She is arguably the most famous professional blogger, since she invented its dominant mode: a titillating post delivered with a snarky kicker, casual profanity, and genuine fan-girl enthusiasm—sonnets made of dirt. Yet no good deed goes unpunished; the player-hater e-mail she received during her tenure at the gossip site was astonishing. “I’d get these e-mails saying, ‘You’re a dirty slut who can’t get laid,’ ” she recalls. “How can I be dirty slut and not get laid?”
Marketing Beyond the Gatekeepers
Lately the blogoshere has been buzzing about the New York Magazine article entitled Blogs to Riches – The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom. Hugh Macleod talked about it so did Guy Kawasaki and Darren Rowse and Gawker and…