The discussions about PPP over the past weeks have me thinking about how Bloggers can turn their effort into reward. The difficulty that smaller bloggers have in monetising their blogs is no secret, and while there is no reason that any blogger should be able to make money from their content it would be better if there was some link between quality of content and reward.
I understand there is some link, major blogs like Engadget, BoingBoing and GigaOm did not get to their position by luck, but by recognising the potential early and acting on it with good content. They are getting rewarded for the past quality of their content. It is hard for new entrants to work their way up the chain and become a new Engadget. Second tier blogs seem to be able to make enough to get by, although I have not been able to find much info on the sorts of revenue they can pull. For a new entrant, even if you have a good level of content it is hard to get commensurate reward
This was brought into focus for me when Scott Adams announced he was cutting back on his blogging. The main reason being that it was not rewarding him in relation to the effort he was spending. The Dilbert blog has a huge readership, a selection of easily defined and great to target demographics and regular content for 2 years. If these advantages were not enough to turn a buck then what hope the rest of us?
I believe that the key lies in post quantity. Even with its regular daily posts, the Dilbert blog is best read with an RSS reader. This is much more convenient for the reader as they get the updates from multiple sites at once. While easier for the reader it reduces the ad displays and therefore clickthroughs, compromising that revenue model. I see this on my own site, where most of my traffic comes from RSS readers, but most do not click through to the actual site.
The major blogs and blogging companies have multiple writers and many posts per day. I cannot keep up with sites like BoingBoing in my RSS reader, I end up missing too much. It’s better for me to go to the site itself. The money making sites become those that offer enough content, and wide enough coverage of news to become destination sites. If you do not, or cannot attract people to actually come to your site you are less likely to make money from your content. Without RSS though, few people would even bother reading your content. The thing that gets you noticed is also what limits the value you can claim.
In my opinion this is going to drive two trends. The first is more and more alternate revenue models like PayPerPost and the like. Some bloggers want/need to make money from what they do and there are companies out there who would like to make a cut for enabling that. The second is greater consolidation of individual blogs into networks. The meta sites don’t cut it as the content sources are too unpredictable for bloggers to rely on. The future is probably networks like Weblogs Inc or GigaOM, where multiple bloggers team together to create location blog networks. This may happen organically or via large company buy-outs/employment of smaller blogs. Hopefully GNC can become one of these network locations.