BloggerCon: Making Blogs Make Money
: Here’s my description of the BloggerCon session I’ll be in on Making Blogs Make Money:
For those who want to make money blogging — and that is by no means everyone — this session will do three things:
First, everyone in the room — and elsewhere, speaking through comments here or here and through IRC during the session — will add ideas about the value of weblogs and how to make money with them. The broader and longer the list, the better: from selling ads to selling things to selling blogging services to selling access to readers to… whatever. The hope is to create a menu of ideas for creative bloggers to use to try to support their efforts.
Second, we will list what’s missing to make this possible. In some cases, that will be services, such as standard measurement of weblogs’ audience and traffic. Or that will be alliances, such as ad networks across similar. Or that will be standards or software or… whatever. The hope is to inspire the entrepreneurial and technical and organizational geniuses of the blogosphere to provide what it needs to prosper.
Third, we will list the dangers that lurk in mixing business and blogging — for example, how to maintain credible distance from advertisers and complete transparency about advertising relationships while taking money from those advertisers.
At the end, we hope to see a white board — and many, many blogs — filled with ideas and needs and next steps to support and grow this new medium.
: Please make LOTS of comments here or here with ideas so we start the discussion with tons of them, which I’ll compile before the session.
: See Rick Bruner’s suggestions for a business model for Boing Boing. See Boing Boing’s request for just such ideas.
: UPDATE: Cesar Brea has a fascinating take on the business of blogging and adds up what we’re all already spending on this obsession.
