/How to make money out of blogs

How to make money out of blogs

This is a question that more than one person asked me during Blogak 2.0: ?Does your company create blogs?” So, what do you live from?? It?s normally assumed that blogs are free-of-charge webs that can be created via Blogger or other platforms. Earning one’s living from blogs seems, therefore, impossible. So I’ll explain in a few words ?where money comes from?.

Alianzo renders its services to third parties, normally corporations and the public services, that want to open a communications channel through certain social network. So this is the classic consultancy job where technical questions (blogs? creation and maintenance) are one more task.What is more important for us is, for instance, to help clients to determine what type of blog they want, what components it should include and how to make it known. Obviously, the demand of these services depends directly on the market’s knowledge of these type of tools. That’s why we make a big effort in divulgating that knowledge through events and through this blog about social networks.

Nonetheless, consultancy is not the only income source in the blogosphere.

1. Platform of blogs with ads. This is the case of Blogger (which houses more than 15 million blogs from all around theworld), Blogs.ya.com (20.000 blogs, according toblogometre) or MSN spaces (30 millions in all the globe). These platforms’ income depends exclusively on their ability to gain ads via AdSense or banners. It is the same system that Geocities used to apply to free personal pages.

2. Platform of pay-to-use blogs. The best known example at a global level is Six Apart (TypePad and Movable Type), which charges clients for using its blog generation software and for hosting blogs. The differential value lies in the customization and support for the user. We have to add that Six Apart is a company that makes money. Alianzo sometimes resorts to TypePad’s hosting and, in other occasions, we’ve adapted Movable Type’s software for the client; however, WordPress (free) is currently equal in quality and usefulness.

3. Platform of blogs in a private brand This third option consists of offering a blog platform so that a third party manages it. Six Apart also uses this model of business and, in Spain, La Coctelera tried it as well. Alianzo is also exploiting it with a couple of clients, whose name I cannot reveal right now.

4. Platform of blogs with content management and ads. This is the pattern followed by Weblogs, SL, a replica of the North American Weblogs,Inc., which has recently been bought by AOL. It consists of transferring the advertising method of the traditional media (which provides a space where advertisers can enter their ads) to the blogosphere. The success of this pattern is directly proportional to the control of content production costs, because the generation of revenue is an exogenous factor (it depends on the market). As far as this last note is concerned, currently, except for those fields which are strictly professional or closely related to technology, blogs hardly make money. And whoever claims they do, show us the figures!! 😉