Does Your Blog Make Money?

There is an interesting post over on 9rules that asks the question, "Does Your Blog Make Money?"

Which of course is an interesting question for those of us who are interested in making some money from blogging. I encourage you to go over and read the replies, it is very eye opening. In short, the majority of the responders are saying that they aren't making much money from blogging. However, most of them are also saying that they aren't particularly interested or trying to make money from their blogs. Which is fine....I guess....but....

Blogging is many things to many people. For some, a blog is just an online diary and they really don't care who, if anyone reads it, or so they want us to believe. For others, a blog is a way to share ideas, often with friends or coworkers. For others, a blog is a means of advertising a product they are selling. And for others, a blog is a writing career for people who are undiscovered writers, (and some writers who are discovered)

I believe that a blogger is part researcher, part writer, part entertainer and part self serving bastard...ha ha just kidding...about the last part. Actually I feel that most bloggers, whether they want to make money or not, are entertainers. We write so people will read what we have to say, and we get our kicks from doing that. No different than someone who writes books for a living, or magazine articles. We are all writing for much the same reason. The topics may be different, but the reasons are similar at least.

As entertainers, the cream rise to the top. The same holds true for bloggers. The cream rises to the top and have huge audiences and likely, but not always, they are the ones who are making money from their blogs. Blogging is no different than any other writing or entertainment career in that regard. Lots of entertainers, take comedians or muscians, are not making much money from their talent. However, a few are. They are the most gifted of all. They deserve to get paid. The same hold true for bloggers.

Blogging comes from largely technical roots, but has developed and morphed over the years into something else, something more mainstream. All of a sudden mainstream media like CNN are showing things like, "What the bloggers are saying" and trust me, that stuff is seldom about the latest great widget for wordpress or how html has changed over the years. It's mainstream stuff, news, entertainment, world events that are talked about in mass media.

As entertainers, we are competing with CNN and ABC and The New York Times and the like, for viewers, readers, an audience. And when we get one, we deserve to be paid for it, the same as CNN deserves to be paid etc. The problem is, blogging competition is intense, and poor quality is not as easily weeded out. Take this blog for instance. I can keep writing this stuff until I am blue in the face, no one can cancel me. I can of course give it up if it isn't making money, but there is no outside influence except that to get rid of the junk.

Blog ad providers, and others are capitalizing on the millions of blogs out there. They are not putting all their eggs in a few baskets, so they don't care as much about quality as they do about quantity. Let's face it, getting your advertisement in front of 10 million people doesn't particularly matter if it is one person per blog seeing it, or all 10 million seeing it on one blog. It works out for them, 10 million people see their advertisment.

I can't help but wonder what the face of blogging ad companies would be like if we were paid by the size of our audience, our ratings like television, instead of being paid per click on an advertisement or only when something is purchased by one of our readers. Or if to be read, we had to be bought, like a book, or magazine subscription. Bloggers have become the cheapest form of advertising there is, and the lowest paid.

So where am I going with this...dammed if I know...I lost track....got going on a diatribe...oh yeah...what I was trying to say is that in answer to the question. "Does my blog make money?" I think the question is, "Should my blog make money?" to which I reply, yes, most definitely if it is a worthwhile entity.

I'm not poo-pooing the purists who believe that a blog shouldn't even display an ad, that is their choice, but if you are writing to be read, and writing to entertain others besides yourself and maybe a few close friends, you are an entertainer and deserve to be compensated for the information, opinion, laughter and thought provoking ideas that you provide to your readers....

Do you think that Jerry Seinfeld or Jay Leno or any other entertainer would have stayed in comedy all their lives if they couldn't make money at it? Probably, they are entertainers at heart, and like bloggers get their kicks from an audience, but being paid for it enabled them and others to become even better at entertaining. Bloggers should be entitled to the same potential results.

In other words, don't sell yourself short...you my dear blogger friend, are an entertainer...