To answer the most vital question....blogging bucks are still coming from ads, affiliate sales (a la Amazon), sponsorship, and tip jars. No magic wand yet for would-be bloggers.
Earning Money
Most bloggers are hesitant to commercialize their personal blogs. That being said, folks seem quite comfortable about putting ads on subject-related blogs, and about accepting sponsorships for professional blogs. While no one in the room had a problem with ads in the newspaper, most were suspicious of ads in blogs.
Those who are interested in getting ads weren't sure how to go about selling or pricing them. Doing it under CPM (check comparable sites for their rates) or under readership (check comparable publications for their circulations and pricing) were the standard metrics.
Managing Personal Brand
Plenty of dialogue about how folks are using their personal blog as an extension of their personal brand. Blogs are a great way to get you customers, speaking engagements, invitations to author articles, etc.
More Recurrent Themes
The subjects of ethics and controversy came up again in this session...
Blogging ethics still haven't emerged or been a subject of standardization discussions. Ethics (at least in theory) are applied to journalism. Ethics aren't applied to book authorship or memoirs. How can we set the standard for blogs?
Folks are tired of creating controversy in order to get traffic. "You have to be an extremist sometimes to get links."
Other observations
Character blogs were also a topic of conversation, albeit one that was
subject to violent agreement more than anything else. (If you don't
know, 'character blogs' are blogs authored by a fictional character.
This is not the same as blogs written under a pseudonym.) There has
been a lot of flack in the blogosphere about companies doing character
blogs, because "blogs are supposed to be from real people."
There's a big difference between the value of the form and the value of the content. Blogs and podcasts are forms; their validity has nothing to do with whether the content is any good.
Link-based ratings systems are terrible. Since only 1 in 5 blog readers is also a blogger (Pew Research, 2005), then 80% of readers are being ignored when site popularity is being ranked.
Tags: christine herron spacejockeys technology society blogher personal brand
