dispatches from the new world of work

Blogs and Business

Day One at the summit. Some thoughts. A fair amount of the discussion today focused on how to make money from blogs. As individuals. Chris Pirillo talked about his various sites and how he uses ads and generates a good amount of dough. No one here wants to talk about actual money. Seems they've all got contracts with Google that prevent them from disclosing what they make. Someone asked Chris if he could pay his mortgage with what he makes from ads. He said he could pay everyone's mortgage. Meaning the mortgage of everyone in the room. About 120 folks. Either mortgages in Seattle are ridiculously low (which I doubt) or Chris is pulling in a serious amount of dough each month from his blogs. He's got staff to pay. He did, however, refuse to pay any of our mortgages.

Marc Canter, a big guy with a big voice was talking about Marqui, a conference sponsor best known for the fact that they pay bloggers to blog.

Molly—not a halfschlag—Holzschlag spoke about how just posting isn't enough to drive traffic to your site. Of course, you do have to post regularly, but you also need to have comments but you've got to moderate those and she says that Trackback is better than Permalink but you've got to watch out for the spammers. Ah, the blight of the online world. She has coauthored a book on using Movable Type blog software, among many other books on web design and HTML.

And I think today is her birthday. Happy Birthday, Molly!

Links to speakers' slides can be found here.

Erik Hansen posted this on 01/25/05.

Comments

It will be interesting to read about return on investment in the Blog World. What kind of ROI's are being measured, plus any measures on political impacts: like the humiliation of Dan Rather and CBS news given their leftist "creative news stories" - to put it kindly.

Posted by John at January 25, 2005 11:02 AM

AdSense Revenue is a big thing if one knows how to get the CPCgoing.. I remember having a discussion with forrester on this. Their tech savvy person, said that revenues from blog sites "Search marketers see themselves being priced out of paid search for competitive keywords, and if they want to stay in the game, they have to find a way to justify the higher costs. Some try to tweak their backend conversion rate while others are taking into account the branding impact of their ads -- so the ad receives credit for just an impression, even if it doesn't generate a clickthrough. "
Secondly, Google's - Salar Kamangar, director of product management, indicates Adwords affliates and ranking has now changed. This will effect ROI's on click streams and weightage !! This means 2 of 10 ad's will not get displayed !!

Yes, Chris is known to pull a lot of dough .. he's quite a fellow !! :)-

Posted by /pd at January 25, 2005 11:31 AM

I believe the common discussion on business blogs is off-track. The issue shouldn't be how to make money with a blog, the issue should be how to use a blog to support a company making money. A company's web presence exists only to support one or both of two things - generate revenue or support a customer. Blogging needs to be employed in support of this presence.

Blogging isn't an end, it's a means.

Posted by Jim Logan at January 25, 2005 12:27 PM

Jim, yes, there was too much about individuals making money from their blogs. This second day at the conference I think will focus more on what you're suggesting blogs should be all about.

Posted by Erik at January 25, 2005 1:38 PM

Jim: blogs behind a firewall don't have all the fodder to support it... the business needs to askthemselves are they willing to expose there flanks and dip their feet into blogsphere.. openly, honesty and candidly.. Most corporate lacks guts !

Posted by /pd at January 25, 2005 2:10 PM

Hey, it's my birthday today too. My new, temporary drivers license says so!

It was great meeting you at the party Erik. Gee, you think all of my anti-adware fences in my browsing are denying people a roof over their heads? Hey buddy, can you spare an ad view?

Posted by orcmid at January 25, 2005 2:19 PM

/pd,

I believe risk management is the greatest issue to address in proposing blogging to business leaders.

By risk I mean: How will trade secrets and intellectual property be protected? How will we handle negative and profane comments to posts? Will we accept comments at all? Will we be exposed to investors and shareholders â€“ especially regarding Sarbanes-Oxley? Do we have any legal obligations or risk as a result of this real-time and open communications? What are the safeguards to assure we donâ€™t weaken a competitive position? How do we integrate blogging into our marketing plan (corporate marketing plans are scripted). Etc.

Senior management isnâ€™t likely to have an issue with the mechanics of establishing a blog and theyâ€™ll understand the positive possibilities of blogging (the business value of blogging and mapping blogging to business purpose must be part of the proposal), itâ€™s the risks theyâ€™ll be concerned and uncomfortable with.

Addressing senior managementâ€™s business concerns is necessary to winning authority to launch a company blog. Food for thought...

Posted by Jim Logan at January 25, 2005 2:50 PM

Jim: I can't disagree. You bring valid issues to this discourse.
IP & PAtents =:Risky business. E.g Apple Vs TradeSecret. MSFT vs. Engadet (JAson C).etc. The ethos of Blogsphere, markets and companies will have too leverage TRUST between themselves. If I can't trust an employee to blog properly- DOnt let s/he blog. Likwise markets to Companies. How much trust shoud I put into syndication with you ? The Value Stream of blogging will always have risk's. This is an extreme criteria which all participants have to resolved. However, with blogsphere, the advantage its more of a grassroot level initative, its being driven by the people, for the people and to the people.. its a very open ended with transprency- and not veiled behind corporate walls !!

Most companies really don't understand that the markets are laughing. AT Them !! Companies need a strategy to involve themselves in the market conversations, else they will not have any markets. PERIOD !! The discourse is the market. If a companie's culture ends before the discourse begins, then their future markets is not existent. Bill-Josh says it best "its easier too let the cat outa the bag, then trying to put it back in !!"

Posted by /pd at January 25, 2005 3:34 PM

I don't get it!

Why do speakers post their PowerPoint presentations instead of simple, straight forward summaries of what they have said. Looking at the slides posted so far, I can only hope that the speakers know more about blogging than they do about presenting and PowerPoint. :(

Joel Heffner

Posted by Joel Heffner at January 25, 2005 8:38 PM

I posted PDFs to the Blog Business Summit site. ;)

Posted by Chris Pirillo at January 26, 2005 5:23 AM

Chris: some questions...

1)Where and what is the strategy ? I really dont see any in your .pdf handout. Yet the session says "What Strategies Make Money"
2)Are you suggesting that RSS now has Ads in it?
3)How is value-streaming taking place for consulting clients ? Could you aritculate a little further?

Posted by /pd at January 26, 2005 10:51 AM