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Rich Bloggers Get Richer: The Aristocracy of the Blogosphere
I attended a session lead by Chris Pirillo and Andru Edwards, although Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble, Dave Taylor and others seemed to capture the discussion. This stands to reason because these bloggers are the leaders in Entreprenurial Blogging and Maximizing Ad Revenues on blogs, and in fact the name of the session. There was passionate discussion about monetizing blogs, as it always seems to be when discussing money, but one of the things became clear to me as I filtered what was being said versus what was being answered versus what has been tried versus what has worked in the realm of making money blogging. Those bloggers that have already made their riches are those that are now about to get richer. I don’t mean this as a derogatory statement, but it was clear that statements such as "the new medium is podcasting, videocasting and RSS" for the next money making battleground, but the early adopter bloggers that were the first to ride the wave, are now the early adopters about to ride the wave of the new medium online. The blogosphere is now clogged and jammed with bloggers and content and that leverage has been used up and exhausted. Those that are now beginning to blog must work twice as hard or worse, than the ones that were visionaries. As they looked back on old times, there was a hint to the crowd that, "Sorry, you are too late, but thanks for stopping by and listening to our success. This may be a cynical look, and of course it does reek of some sour grapes on my part, but those of us that are willing to work hard and to be focused in our vision, there is still a chance for us to reach for some of the table scraps of the aristocracy of the blog kings and queens. UPDATE: I wanted clarify about the session and the panel that was directing the dicussion. Chris and Andru were the leaders of the discussion, but Jason, Dave Taylor and Jason Weisberger of FM were attendees to the session that had a passionate voice about earning money from blogs and they are certainly leaders in the industry. This is a session that should be a whole day of discussion and ideas and workings of blogs and how to monetize blogs, make money and the entreprenurial spirit of these leaders.
Tags: Chris Pirrillo, Andru Edwards, Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble, Dave Taylor, Entreprenurial Blogging, Ad Revenues, podcasting, videocasting, RSS, Jason Weisberger, FM Media
8 Users Commented In " Rich Bloggers Get Richer: The Aristocracy of the Blogosphere "
it’s just honest advice that if you’re bootstrapping a business that you don’t want to jump into a crowded space. If you’re car blog # 128 or gadget blog #287 you’re gonna have to spend a lot of money to catch up and get in the top 10. Is it impossible? No, it just might not be the best investment.
I think what you heard in the session was the fact that even the “aristocracy” (what a joke!) has a hard time starting new blogs today! The space is crowded–just like cable TV is–and when that happens smart folks look for next thing.
Now, that being said if you’re willing to invest you can find a place in even popular verticals. You just have to look at it differently than the days when there were no cars blogs (there were those days!).
I think that is partially true and partially defeatist. Yes, it was easier to become a high profile blogger before blogging was so popular. Yes, it is easy to stay on top of the heap as a popular blogger as long as you keep up the posting. There is kind of a pyramid scheme where all new bloggers are trying to link to popular bloggers and keeping them at the top of popularity lists.
But not to be defeatist there are plenty of opportunities for a blogger to become successful with twelve months of high quality blogging. People were saying the internet bubble had burst and along came YouTube. You come up with the right ideas, work hard and get some breaks and you are away.
New bloggers face less of a battle than first time novellists who put in far more time, pour out their souls and get a mountain of rejection letters. Making money from blogging remains an easier path than other types of writing.
Two things:
1. There’s still room for visionaries, and I hesitate to agree with the label for the ones you mention. Early adoption does not necessarily make you a genius — it usually just makes you a lucky nerd (I specifically exclude Pirillo from that statement… he is a genius).
2. This post hurts your positioning. Why write it?
Thanks for the comments from all. Jason I wanted to impart my opinion as to the feeling I left when I went out the door from sitting in the panel conference. It seemed that the people that were speaking were those looking back on their hard work saying that it is going to be tough to immulate what the early adopters have done and make money from their model. Yes, now they (the leading /lucky/early adopters, etc.) are on to the newest and greatest monetary advantage based on their connections and their leverage their have earned from making their fortunes early. We hear about how gat you are and how great your plan worked, but when we come to a conference, we already know you are an expert or are a genius. That’s why we are there. What we want is not to hear you bang your chest about your model, we want to know how we can use your model and be not as successful, but at least able to do what works. I left feeling that those I mentioned said “I made my money, boy it’s going to be hard for you, but look we are now leaving this and going on to the next big thing that we make us more money, and when we make that money, we will be back here next year to tell you how well we did, and how hard it will be for you to do it like we did.
Thanks for the comment Brian, I look at these guys as mentors, and I’m not sure they look at us as mentees. My position was not to say these guys suck, my rant was more about let us have some of the fruit too. I’m merely critiquing how the panel was sold, and what we got as a result. We went to find out how we can monetize our blogs and we left knowing how easy it is for them to make their piece of the pie. They sold it as a session where we will teach you ways to monetize your blogs to make money and we were given a presentation on how well we did making our money and now we are on to the next big thing.
I found the whole session surprising because I expected pragmatic tips and ideas from people who were monetizing their blog traffic in one way or another, clashing with people who felt that blogs shouldn’t be about earning money at all.
Surprisingly, for example, we didn’t talk about PayPerPost, CREAMaid, or any of the other up-and-coming blog link pay systems. But what about Text-Link-Ads, a sponsor of the Blog Business Summit itself? Is that a legit way to earn a few bucks from your blog without sullying your content (as some would have it)?
Lots of potential for the session, but the deliverable was rather disappointing to me too, Jim.
I think new bloggers need to step back from their ideal vision of what it means to blog. Instead, start with content that people are actually interested in now i.e. check out what people are searching for. In this way new bloggers can attract visitors and over time engage in the types of conversations that they want.
There’s more to it than what I wrote above, but I thought I’d toss an idea out in to the discussion.
