blogging for dollars?

This page looks at 'blogging for dollars' in the 'gift economy' and print embodiments of the blog.

It covers -

• blogging for dollars
• blogospheres offline?

     blogging for dollars

As an earlier page noted, visions of 'blogging for dollars' - whether through donations from kind-hearted readers, some form of subscription by readers, patronage by a maecenas or subvention by a corporate sponsor - have provoked disagreement among the blogerati.

Clay Shirky enthused in the 2002 Weblogs & the Mass Amateurization of Publishing that

weblogs mark a radical break. They are such an efficient tool for distributing the written word that they make publishing a financially worthless activity. It's intuitively appealing to believe that by making the connection between writer and reader more direct, weblogs will improve the environment for direct payments as well, but the opposite is true. By removing the barriers to publishing, weblogs ensure that the few people who earn anything from their weblogs will make their money indirectly.

Blog evangelist Meg Hourihan was characteristically more upbeat, enthusing

Think of what some of the best bloggers could do if they were financially able to do focused, full-time blogging? Pick a topic you're interested in, now imagine someone had 40 hours per week to cover everything related to that topic, and you get the idea.

The notion of corporate support has been attacked as "selling out to the System". Few bloggers have had much success in calling for money from readers. It is unclear whether initial enthusiasm for paying Andrew Sullivan, often characterised as the prototypical commercial blogger (with claims that revenue is around US$6,000 per week), has been sustained. In questioning some of the hype about performance and the 'busker economy' we've suggested that some people could make a living reading from a telephone directory ... but that those people are exceptional: enthusiasm and a keyboard, irrespective of an online tip-jar, is unlikely to provide a living for most bloggers.

One blogger somewhat sourly commented

Ever since Andrew Sullivan conducted his "Pledge Week" and made damned near $80,000, bloggers everywhere have become panhandlers and squeegie-guys, telling their heart-rending stories of brokeness while pointing to their Pay Pal buttons and tip jars. When hookers do that on the street, they get arrested for the crime of "solicitation." And the hookers usually offer a more valuable commodity than most blogs do.

before going on to comment

I work a 10-or-more hour a day job five days every week and every 7th weekend. I have a 30-mile commute back and forth. I blog because I enjoy doing it, but I make my living from that job, so I BLOG ONLY WHEN I'M NOT WORKING. If I had to make a choice between blogging and work, guess what it would be? Hint: one pays the bills and the other COSTS money.

I crave attention, adoration, lots of traffic and a loyal following, but I don't want a dime of your money. If I can't afford to do this, I SHOULDN'T BE DOING IT. I should be doing something that pays me money.

In practice those bloggers who gain tangible revenue are those whose online writing has attracted sufficient attention for them to secure gigs on the lecture circuit (such as Mr Shirky), deals from commercial publishers or appointments to academic faculties and institutional boards or other posts.

     blogospheres offline

One of the first major efforts to embody a blog in offline print is the UK Guardian's opportunistic Salam Pax: The Baghdad Blog (London: Guardian Books 2003) by Salam Pax - aka the Baghdad Blogger - who as we've noted earlier in this profile has been promoted as "the Anne Frank of the War ... and its Elvis". It's perhaps just as well that low teledensity in Rwanda spared us the horrors of a blog during that nation's ethnic massacres.

We can, however, expect to see print and filmed versions of real and faux blogs, building on works such as Klein's Primary Colours, The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole, Bridget Jones' Diaries and Nicholson Baker's Vox.

They in turn trace their lineage to epistolary novels and redacted reportage such as Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's Les liaisons dangereuses (1782) and Goethe's Briefe aus der Schweiz (1779).

   next page  (genres)