Is Blogging Doomed? Why A-Lister’s Are Quitting and Dan Lyons Is Just Plain Wrong

We are most definitely in the midst of an evolution of the blogosphere. The recession is causing reality to hit home. Some of the A-List bloggers are leaving the business. What’s going on here?

Missy Ward tweeted out a link to this story on WebProNews. Apparently, Dan Lyons (aka “fake” Steve Jobs) is now quitting blogging. His reason? There’s no money in it. He says:

“More than 500,000 people hit my site—by far the biggest day I’d ever had—and through Google’s AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks. Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81. Soon after this I struck an advertising deal that paid better wages. But I never made enough to quit my day job.”

My response? That’s because you’re depending on Adsense! So, Dan Lyons writes this piece in Newsweek where he calls Growing Rich by Blogging Is a High-Tech Fairy Tale.

Lyons Isn’t Alone.

If we look at the general state of blogging, we see that more and more people are looking to blogging to make money. However, a lot of the old-timers like Lyons are realizing that it isn’t so easy to make a lot of money blogging. Michael Arrington is on hiatus because he’s tired of the haters. Gawker has laid off a bunch of bloggers. B5 Media “restructured” its pay scale. Scoble has reduced to only occasional blogging and has now gone almost totally to FriendFeed. Calacanis ran to his email list.

So, some have money problems. Others just get tired of the stress.

For Most, The Money Sucks

If we look at Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere, we see figures to back this up. The mean annual revenue from U.S. bloggers is $5,060. Of the top 10% of bloggers, the average annual revenue is only $19,000.

The figures are about what I would expect. It is a bit humbling, actually. It is weird to see that I am personally in the upper crust of professional blogging. I do make six figures per year at this.

But, the fact that I do make a good living at this is exactly why I can tell Dan Lyons that he is absolutely full of CRAP.

It might be a fairy tail for HIM to make that kind of money, but it isn’t a fairy tail for somebody who actually does the right things. Lyons was trying to make money through traditional ads with a tech site. I know from experience – making money with a tech blog is HARD! The tech market (as far as blogs go) really just isn’t that good for one-man blogging operations. It is a saturated market. The big guys like Techcrunch and Gizmodo can do well, but a one-man blogger trying to go full-time as a tech blogger today is looking at one HELL of an up-hill fight.

The only reason I manage to do it is because I don’t completely suck at marketing.

The Future of Blogging Income

I wrote a report on the future of blogging income. Anybody reading this article should opt-into my mailing list to get a free copy. In it, I talk about the “freemium” model. It is the future for serious pro bloggers and it is how I think a lot of future six figure bloggers are going to make it to that goal.

To put it bluntly, the reason that the average annual income from blogging is so low is because MOST BLOGGERS SUCK AT MARKETING.

Look, if you’re going to just write your ass off, throw up some ads, promote some affiliate products, and expect to see big paychecks, then you’re going to give up like Dan Lyons.

Blogging is marketing. Pure and simple. If you don’t treat it as such, you won’t make big money at it.

Some of the “a-list” bloggers started blogging in the tech sector. It is a touch sector. And, many of them suck at marketing. In fact, some detest internet marketers. That attitude is to their detriment.

Where is Blogging Going?

The WebProNews article seems to think that it is only the blog networks who can save the blogosphere. Perhaps. But, those blog networks are still living in the old-school world where the same rules of traditional media apply to revenue. Networks can aggregate a bunch of blogs together and pull more advertising dollars.

That article says:

Like it or not, the corporation is going to have to enter the blogosphere, and by irony, will ruin it in order to save it.

Whatever.

Ironically, the story quotes examples (in radio) of Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh as some of the few “shining stars”. What these people seem to fail to see is that these radio personalities are excellent marketers!

Don’t Listen to Dan Lyons

Lyons is a smart guy. His “fake Steve Jobs” concept was a stroke of genius. But, his outlook of doom and gloom for the blogosphere is a bunch of crap.

Instead of acting like a reporter when you blog, start acting like a marketer. You find a niche. You brand yourself. You market to your audience. You provide value. It grows. And it happens to be that blogging is a fantastic tool to use!

EDIT 2/11 7:46AM: Looks like Scoble started blogging a lot more since I last looked at his site. He linked to this post, which got my attention. When I looked, I notice he’s been busy. So, it looks like I shouldn’t have included Scoble in the list above. Which is good, too, since he adds a lot to the world of tech blogging.