Blogs to Riches – New York Magazine

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

Comments

Asian Playboy says:

2/14/2006 at 2:11 pm

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?!
Danger Stevens says:

2/14/2006 at 3:44 pm

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.
Kashif Aziz says:

2/14/2006 at 5:41 pm

I am trying a mix between Record Label and Boutique approach.
La Lara says:

2/14/2006 at 9:28 pm

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.
buzz says:

2/15/2006 at 4:37 am

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?”