More optimism about blog advertising. My concern with this angle, which I’ve expressed to BlogAds CEO Henry Copeland before (who’s quoted in the story) is the current over-reliance among blogs on political advertising at the moment. Sure, pick the low-hanging fruit while you can, I suppose, but let’s not create the impression among advertisers that political ads are all blogs are good for. Otherwise, come November, and that’s it for another four years.
Mediapost: Convention Coverage Could Boost Blog Traffic, Ad Rates, and Awareness
Had the same thought Rick when reading that article. The heavily trafficked blogs – the ones that can make a few bucks with advertising are full of political ads. Those adds are going to go away come this November.
However, I do think the conventions are going to push brand awareness of the term ‘blog’ to new heights. Advertisers who are running into limited supply and increasingly higher prices on the search engines may accept ads on blogs when their marketing folks suggest it as an option.
But founding a dotcom that rode to the heights and then crashed in value with the decline in ad dollars in 2000, I’d be nervous about a business model banking on advertising dollars for net publishing. Net publishing is great marketing for an underlying business but net publishing for the sake of publishing, no matter how good the content, is a tough go unless you are one of the really big boys.
Comment by Kevin O'Keefe — July 26, 2004 @ 10:39 am
Kevin,
I don’t agree entirely. I think there will be room for the “small boys” (and girls) to make a modest amount of money off of blogvertising. A few anyway. Emphasis on modest amounts, but the beauty of blogs is they can be one-person, part-time publising. Aside from the Daily Koses and Andrew Sullivans of the world already making a living wage off of their blogs, so is Tig Tillinghast of MarketingVox, Rafat Ali of PaidContent and, most notably, Nick Denton of Gawker Media. These are the pioneers. Granted, it’s going to still be the distinct minority of bloggers that many any money at all, but for a determined few, making $50,000 to $100,000 or more a year won’t be impossible.
Comment by Rick Bruner — July 26, 2004 @ 10:48 am