A Listers giving up Blogging? Excellent News!

Nic Brisbourne reports on this article from Webpronews:

Anyone who writes a blog or (I would guess) reads a blog like this one wonders occasionally what the monetisation potential is. Anecdotally I have known for a while that the answer is ‘not very much’, and that has certainly been my experience. Last year I earnt what turns out to be the average for blogs that adverstise - £150 (which I gave to charity).
Webpronews has some real data subject, prompted by the announcement of Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs) that he is quitting the blogosphere because there isn’t enough money in it:

The day the New York Times blew his Fake Steve Jobs cover, Lyons says, “more than 500,000 people hit my site—by far the biggest day I’d ever had—and through Google’s AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks. Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81. Soon after this I struck an advertising deal that paid better wages. But I never made enough to quit my day job.”

And they also quote some more general data from Technorati, and the message here is clear. Apart from a very small number of top-top bloggers we are all doing this for reasons other than money!

I think my reasons for writing The Equity Kicker are:

- To develop my own thinking about where the trends in media and technology are taking us - both via the conversation that happens in the comments and the process of forcing myself to write things down
- To get to know interesting people who share a passion for the subjects I write about
- To build profile for DFJ Esprit and our portfolio companies

I think the people who are trying to do it directly for the money are living in a FreeConomic world right now - but those who are blogging indirectly in my view are creating value for themselves in a number of ways, as Nic notes. My reasons for blogging are similar to Nic's, with the addition I would like to think people will read Broadstuff, think we are smart fellows and even give us work

Other indirect benefits I have seen people get are:

- Book or other media deals for bloggers (just think of all the racy ladybloggers with book deals for example)
- Increased demand for another product one is selling (eg musicians selling more CDs etc)
- Access to previously closed doors - I know I've been invited to things that previously I'd not have been, because of this blog
- Increased publicity / visibility leading to teh ability to move to a better opportunity elsewhere.

As for the A Listers giving up - as Webpronews notes, this is a pattern:

This crop of A-listers aren’t the first to have blog-related meltdowns. They may be, though, the first to really go and stay gone. Self-proclaimed original blogger Dave Winer is known for periodic threats to stop blogging. Yet, he still blogs. Robert Scoble, chief among the famous-for-blogging-and-I-wrote-the-book-on-blogging elite, is prone to emotional denouncements of the craft and self-imposed mental health hiatuses. Yet, he still blogs, though to a lesser degree.

And I think its great - more space for the up and coming ones! Also, the Ad revenues will not always be so low for blogs that reach a genuine, involved audience - this is the Magazine market of the future.