Shhhh… The Blogging Business Model

Blogging is becoming a business for a select few, but how long can it last before the business world catches a whiff and susses out the simple mechanism for generating ad-driven revenues? Many for-profit blogs like, Boing Boing, simply repackage actual content allowing them to make money off the teeming masses of individuals that publish original material to the web. As a business model, it’s rather uninspired: grab a bunch of junk from RSS feeds, technorati pings, and credit-link-whoring tipsters tied to their computers and post it before the plebes see it anywhere else first. Anyone can do this, and they will.


The blogging business model needs to be coopted if for no other reason than to render it completely uncool. Has anyone noticed how the for-profit blogs rarely create anything original? Why do they deserve the windfall eyeball profits? Because they steal better and faster than anyone else? At least the dinosaur-era “traditional” media outlets employ journalists to pretend to get the occasional story. Sitting at your computer, obsessively refreshing RSS feeds is not journalism. It never will be. You have to get up and do something. You have to get involved in the world.

For anyone who wants to piggy back into the realm of Gawker Media, Jason Calacanis, and Boing Boing, here’s the formula for big profits and mediocrity:

  1. Get snarky. Affect an air of cool. Get some fashionable eyewear. Use a Mac, for God’s sake.
  2. Build a website. Steal the layout from someone else if you can.
  3. Sub contract the “content” production to a few eager shut-ins. You’ll need at least one link monkey for each website, maybe two if it requires actual writing. This will cost around $2500 per month per person.
  4. Bone up on relevant terminology like CPM (ad impressions per thousand) and learn how to talk about your unique visitors. Advertisers are impressed by numbers.
  5. Watch the money roll in. Be sure to poor mouth and talk about how hard it is to make real money. Refer to yourself as a “band”. Avoid any mention of your real business. Other people might find out how little work is involved.

Here is some specific information from NY Times that suggests you could make $75,000 a year and up per website:

Like Mr. Denton, she was careful not to discuss specifics of Gawker’s business, including how much its editors are paid. But a published interview with Mr. Steele earlier this year provides some insight. Bloggers are paid a set rate of $2,500 a month, he told a digital journalism class at New York University taught by Patrick Phillips, the editor and founder of I Want Media, a Web site focusing on media news.

When asked in the class if the company was in the black, his response was straightforward. “It is profitable,” Mr. Steele said. “We’re very small, have no overhead, no office space. Everybody works from home. And you heard what we pay our writers. Nick founded Gawker very specifically with the idea of starting a whole bunch of blogs in very niche topic areas, hire freelance writers to write each of them, hopefully draw a lot of eyeballs and then sell advertising around it. He had the idea that no one site would probably ever make a fortune. But if you have 10 sites each making $75,000 a year, then, O.K., maybe it’s not like Condé Nast money, but it’s a nice little business.”

Mr. Denton chafed at the mention of Mr. Steele’s interview. He said it was misreported and was supposed to be off the record. Mr. Phillips said that no such arrangement existed, and that the posted interview was an exact transcript from a recording of the session.

Whatever the circumstances, for those quivering about the revolutionary potential of blog publishing, or wondering what makes ventures like Gawker tick, there couldn’t have been a plainer explanation.

The simplicity of the model may be why Mr. Denton is alternately guarded and dismissive of all the hype surrounding blogs. He seems to recognize that he is not up to anything particularly trailblazing, and that it’s only a matter of time before others catch on. Competitors like Jason Calacanis’s Weblogs, with its network of more than 70 consumer and niche blogs, are already copying the Gawker model.

2 comments

  1. Do I sense resentment? Or jealousy?

  2. I’m a hater, and hype-driven businesses drive me bonkers.