Bloggers debate traffic, revenue, monetization, and love.

I participated in a panel discussion this evening hosted by Povo, the new wiki-meets-yelp site in town. I discovered Povo (Portuguese for people) when I was writing about the “Hello Greenway” event. Povo had a wiki on the Greenway.

Each of the panelists had different methods they’d used to increase revenue from their blogs, or try to. Each method had varying levels of success. Ultimately, the value of blogs seemed to be:

1. a place for us to hone our craft,

2. as a showcase for our work, and;

3. only sometimes, a source of revenue.

It seemed more common that panelists found indirect benefits of blogging, such as a way to sell freelance services, to get publishers’ review copies of books and product samples, and to use affiliate programs for some revenue stream.

Adam of Universal Hub lucked out with one of those serendipitous moments Rhea highlighted when something happens and you get a burst of traffic or a sponsor finds you.

I shared a couple of thoughts. Okay, more than a couple about the state of blogging:

– don’t do it for money, even a book deal will not make you rich, and blogging alone will make it hard to pay the bills;

– decide what your focus is, if you want to be a commercial site and drive traffic for ad clicks that’s a different animal than a creative outlet to showcase your unique voice to publishers and agents;

– there’s a vast area of opportunity no one has yet adequately captured. Many entities like Povo (in my observation) are trying to build enough traffic one way or another so that they have a marketable value. Syndicators and aggregators are trying to do the same thing. Big advertisers have not gotten nimble enough to drill down and tailor ads to relevant blogs and small local sponsors haven’t gotten savvy enough to learn how to take advantage of relevant blogs that would be good partners for them.

– That leaves us all wandering in the desert (Just Call me Moses) and cobbling together a bunch of different things to make a living at this thing we love called writing.

People also debated the micro-blogging platform such as Twitter.

Do we resist? Do we jump in and try it? Experiment? You will see that I have decided to try it. My assumption is that there is some overlap between people with the attention span of a gnat who only get their interaction and infotainment in 160 character bytes with those who read real books and appreciate a well crafted story. I probably have readers in both camps and I think we CAN all just get along. Anyway, it’s an experiment. I hope it brings my blog to the attention of a few Tweeters? (“Twits?” “Twitterers?”) who use it.

[Follow me on Twitter: LDGourmet!]

I look forward to what I’ll learn from them!

Sam Baltrusis – the Loaded Gun publisher (in black sweater/white collar) leads a panel discussion of Boston area bloggers: (L to R)

• Susan Johnston Urban Muse
• Scott Kearnan of Diva Divo Dance and Bay Windows
• Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub
• Rhea Becker of The Boomer Chronicles
• me – gesturing, of course
• Carol O’Connor of Table Critic
• Jim Sullivan of Jim Sullivan Ink

Making a point, hope it was a good one.

Special thanks to Lauren Clark DrinkBoston.com for the photos!

Just call me Moses…

Wandering in the desert

Technorati released their “State of the Blogoshpere 2008” report and the discussion about its conclusions has begun.

Here are my comments on the initial conclusion drawn from, or highlighted by, Galley Cat:

“Only Two Percent of Bloggers Can Make a Living”

I have a healthy disbelief of many of the assertions of revenue at the top end of the reported scale. I also note two significant points:

1. Two bloggers cited as making over $1,000 per month had books already or launched their blogs and books around the same time. In other words, the PR machine was primed.

2. At the other end, “Among active bloggers that we surveyed, the average income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month (some of whom had more than one million visitors each month). The median annual income for this group is significantly lower — $22,000.” (emphasis supplied.)

I scanned the report and will probably write more about it as I analyze it, but for those of you who haven’t found your way to Galley Cat or Media Bistro yet, here’s my comment:

I think ad revenue potential is vastly over estimated by, surprise, those whose business is vested in selling traffic. Been blogging for two years and have seen lots of changes, most for the better. One thing remains constant, the refrain that “content is king” uttered by someone who is making profits selling their traffic with your content; usually uttered at the same time they say “we can’t pay you but just think of the great exposure.” The ones making money seem to be doing so by exploiting those willing to give their work away.

On the other hand, many small businesses are not prepared to take advantage of the opportunities focused sponsorship would offer them. For example, I find a product I might give up precious real estate on my blog for. I reach out. They love the idea, but they don’t know the first thing about widgets or code or how to do what they know in concept they ought to be doing. “I’m a small business and don’t really know how to do this kind of thing.”

Larger businesses who get it, don’t want to allow bloggers any control over what goes on their blogs. (Asian dating services? Oprah’s latest diet? Puh-lease.)

I refuse to host soulja-dancing re-fi ads, diet ads, or Kraft Singles ads on my blog and Adsense never rose to a full dollar of revenue after one year.

Syndication is another concept that seems to be growing but it appears that most of those doing it, still struggle to find a business model that works. They are reaching out to established savvy bloggers providing quality content, but still very uneven in the “benefits” they can offer to the bloggers providing the content they’re selling. “just think of the clicks you’ll get!”

If advertisers could figure out how to eliminate middlemen like all these – and find bloggers like me, we would all be happy. At present it seems hard to find each other in the wilderness of the blogosphere. Just call me Moses…

Povo Mojo

I thought this name, Povo, was shorthand for Post Modern Viewpoint or something. Turns out it’s Portuguese for people. As in “by the people, for the people”. This is a wiki meets yelp sort of website. All about events, happening, opinions and sharing resouces.

Tomorrow, I am speaking on a panel of bloggers hosted by the new Povo website folks. The other panelists include:

• Scott Kearnan of Diva Divo Dance and Bay Windows
• Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub
• Jim Sullivan of Jim Sullivan Ink
• Carol O’Connor of Table Critic
• Rhea Becker of The Boomer Chronicles
• Susan Johnston Urban Muse

I’m honored to be asked and looking forward to a lively discussion. When the host is a guy who’s blog is entitled “Loaded Gun” you know I’m doing my homework!

One final thought:

With more magazines going belly up each day, more magazines and newspapers laying off writers every day, why is “blog” still a four-letter word? People look down their noses if you’ve “only” published electronically.

They trumpet post-election day newspaper sales as a sign that print is not dead. If they looked closer they’d see people bought newspapers with the historic headlines to keep for posterity or sell on e-bay or both. Those lined up for the next day papers did not subscribe.

Tomorrow will be good. I’ll keep you posted. Click the event page here for more info.