I had a great trip to BloggerCon II. Aside from the fact that Harvard is not prepared for an overly warm day in April (air conditioning was inadequate for the mob), the event was otherwise great. Saw a lot of existing friends and "equiantances."

The high point of the symposium for me was the session on "The Business of Blogging" (not to be confused with "Blogging in Business"), led by Jeff Jarvis. I was amazed to discover that we at Corante are in the vanguard of bloggers, inasmuchas we are already deriving measurable revenue from ad-based sponsorship (see the right column, if you haven't noticed them already).

My participation in Jeff's session led to several chats, later, with bloggers and reporters about the fact that the new media of blogging is adopting (or absorbing) some of the traditional financial models of traditional media.

Julie Haggerty

[from The New York Times]

But the most talked about route to profit was selling advertisements that pay by the month or by the number of blog visits. Boing Boing (www.boingboing.net), one of the most popular blogs on the Web with its musings by four freelance writers, is considering adding sponsors as a way to offset its server fees of about $1,000 a month.

But observers wonder how advertising - the lifeblood of mainstream newspapers and magazines - will affect the grass-roots-sensibility of Boing Boing and other blogs.

"It all comes down to personal integrity," Mr. Jarvis said. "If you trust and like and read Boing Boing because you trust and like and read it, there is no reason you wouldn't continue to read them because someone is paying for their server."

Bloggers, like Stowe Boyd, who posts at www.corante.com/getreal/, have no problem reviewing products with one hand and soliciting sponsors with the other. Mr. Boyd, who came to the conference from Reston, Va., makes most of his income as a consultant on collaborative technologies, but credits his blog with about $3,000 in advertising revenue each month. "They can't get me to turn around and promote their product," he said. "It's all my agenda."

Before advertisers will flock to blogs, Mr. Jarvis said, bloggers will need to develop data on who is visiting their site, and how often. "I don't want to blow up a bubble here and say this is going to be huge," Mr. Jarvis said." The beauty of it is it is small and it's in the hands of the people."

Henry Copeland, founder of BlogAds, a service that provides classified advertising for Web logs, is even more confident. He predicted that blogs that are making $5,000 a month will be making five or six times that a year from now. Soon, advertisers will be able to say "I want to buy ads on 25 different Web logs in Southern California written by women who drive humvees," and have the perfect audience at their fingertips, he said.

I was unaware that so few bloggers are making money -- in fact, for many semi-successful bloggers the hobby can take a big bite out of their wallet when a spike in readership leads to additional fees from a hosting provider.

Two important outgrowths of the conference for me:

• Jeff Jarvis' session led to a straw poll suggesting as a next step that we form a 'blogging business association' to establish guidelines, collectively bargain for insurance (and other services), and lobby for the 'blogging fringe' of the media marketplace.
  
• I hope to kick off a seminar series (with the sponsorship and support of Corante) to help bloggers turn the corner on becoming a 'professional blogger' -- for which a full definition is still in development. There is no replacement for great content, but content is not enough. I hope to show others how to put the pieces together so blogging can more than just a solitary obsession, and perhaps enough of a paying proposition so you can quit your day job.

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