Unlike, as I learn via the New York Times, one Heather Armstrong:
Her site brings in an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 a month or more — and that’s not even counting the revenue from her two books, healthy speaking fees and the contracts she signed to promote Verizon and appear on HGTV. She won’t confirm her income (“We’re a privately held company and don’t reveal our financials”). But the sales rep for Federated Media, the agency that sells ads for Dooce, calls Armstrong “one of our most successful bloggers,” then notes a few beats later in our conversation that “our most successful bloggers can gross $1 million.”
Wow, outstanding, how do they manage that?
By talking about poop and spit up. And stomach viruses and washing-machine repairs. And home design, and high-strung dogs, and reality television, and sewer-line disasters, and chiropractor visits. And countless other banalities of one mother’s eclectic life that, for some reason, hundreds of thousands of strangers tune in, regularly, to read.
This suggests that, should we want to be more successful with this whole new media thingy, we should, as Oprah might put it, 'share a bit more of ourselves'.
Of course, there's a definite shortage of 'poop and spit up' in our four walls about which to opine.
Though, I have to say, keeping things that way definitely seems worth 30-40 grand a month.
Possibly more.
5 comments:
Have you tweeted your bowel movemnet today, JCW? That's the first step.
You see, this is where all my big-money blogging ambitions fall at the first hurdle.
Do cats count as children? If so, I can make a million...
It seems to me that the whole blogosphere is one giant pyramid scheme. Very few are at the top raking in the moolah. Most of us are down at the bottom. But if you don't expect to get any financial reward, but blog for the fun of it, then that can be reward enough.
OK, I'll stop the philosophising now, and lament the fact that it pays jack-shit.
Care: I've known many people for whom their cats are the ideal Kinderersatz, so perhaps the difference is not so great. Still, even despite a mild allergy to cat hair, I'd rather go to a house full of cats than a house full of kids.
Geoff: I appreciate your lament. On the other hand, I've resisted ever even having ads on the site (or, 'monetarising' it, as the poetic description goes) so I suppose the lack of fundage is self inflicted.
Oh well, I guess it'll have to be a life of honest labour instead....
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