Glenn Reynolds interviewed bloggers at CPAC for his podcast. Check it out.
His latest column at Tech Central Station is called Blogging: Love or Money? Why the dichotomy? I blog for both!
Making money off a blog requires a lot of traffic, and no matter how much the blogosphere grows, most blogs won’t have a lot of traffic, as Clay Shirky persuasively demonstrated a while back. Shirky observed that blogs, like many other things, follow a power-law distribution in terms of links and traffic, with a small number getting most of the links and traffic, and a much larger number getting much less of either. This was, he argued, essentially a function of attention economics. (I’ve written on that subject here).
Glenn doesn’t quantify “a lot of traffic,” but I suppose it’s a matter of opinion. For instance, I’m averaging a little over 4,000 unique visitors per day. (Some people are surprised when I tell them this. They assumed it was much higher. I wish!) In the scheme of things, that’s a lot for a blog, although I’d be satisfied with 20,000. 
Let’s face it, though. Most of us will never reach Glenn’s or Michelle Malkin’s numbers or anywhere close (144,000 and 232,856 per day, respectively).
When I first signed up for Blogads last year, I was getting maybe 1,500. Since blogging was (and still is) new (although it’s changed a lot since early last year), bloggers and advertisers were feeling their way around. Blog networks are popping all over the blogosphere, and networks are more appealing to advertisers these days than the solo blogger. I joined the Pajamas Media network because I knew it would be more profitable than sticking with Blogads, at least for the moment. But someone with lower traffic can command high weekly rates if they’re a good blogger reaching a profitable niche audience.
I think blogging is fun, but I need to do more than just blogging to pay the bills. My blog consulting business is doing OK for a new business in a new industry started by someone who learned as she went along. 
I have three blogs: this one, The Language Artist (business), and Fantasy Fiction for Christians (hobby). A Da Vinci Code movie blog and other niche blogs are on the horizon. The FFC blog makes the least amount of money, but it’s my favorite. Typical, right? Glenn shares the sentiment:
I make some money with my blog, and I make money with other kinds of writing. So what am I excited about? Something that doesn’t pay. With my wife, I’ve been doing podcasts on a variety of topics, even though nobody’s paying us to do so. Why? It’s fun! I used to do radio, and liked it, and now I’m enjoying doing this sort of thing again. I wouldn’t say no to money, but that’s not why I’m doing it — and, in fact, I doubt that many podcasters are making much money, as podcasting is about where blogging was in the summer of 2001. So why are so many people doing it? Because it’s fun! And fun is good.
I always tell potential bloggers not to go into political blogging seeking fame and/or fortune, because they will be disappointed. (Business blogging is a separate issue in the “fortune” department. There’s gold to be dug.) But if they want a soapbox or a place to practice their writing or an online journal or any number of things, a blog is good. I started this blog because I wanted all of the above, and I was fortunate to have found a following and someone willing to pay to advertise on my site.
Whether I’m paid or not and whether I attract 100 readers a day or 100,000, one thing will remain the same: I’ve always been and hope to always be a pure blogger.
Related posts:
Unrelated Update: I met Garry Cobb at CPAC. Check out his blog.
Update II: Joe Carter on readership:
Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost (www.evangelicaloutpost.com) urges Christian bloggers to “think small†and focus on “developing a core constituency of 150 dedicated readers,†the number that research shows to be the maximum number with which most people can have a “genuinely social relationship.â€
Carter wrote in a post titled “The 5/150 Principleâ€: “If you have a blog that is read by more than a few dozen readers, then you are making a bigger impact than you probably realize. If you have 50 people reading your blog, then you have more people in your ‘classroom’ than most professors at Harvard. If you have 90 readers, then you have more people in your ‘pews’ than most pastors have in their churches every Sunday. And if you have more than 1,000 readers a month, you have a larger ‘circulation’ than most poetry and short story magazines.†(Source)
Update III (2/19): Glenn will appear tonight on Pundit Review Radio.
