Money from blogs?

It seems to be a very common thread at the moment, everyone is talking about making money from blogs. We have bloggers auctioning themselves, here and here. Our same intrepid blogger who is auctioning himself, sold his blog earlier this year as well. Almost every blog now has some form of money making items, be it regular advertising, Ad Words, Amazon books (like mind although I don’t think I will ever retire from the Amazon Associates program) and donation jars. Doc Searls even spoke about Making Money at BloggerCon III. But where is this all taking us?

Steve Smith from EContent claims that blogging is less than a business model and more of a retention tool. Steve Rubel disagrees and feels that many blogs are making money, and will turn a profit in 2005. I guess it depends on what your cost base is if you will really make a profit from your blog.

Also to be included in the mix are comments like Darren from ProBlogger who agrees with Fredik from CorporateBloggingBlog that blogs are business support tools, NOT direct money makers.

All of this is a bit confusing. I suspect there are truths in all of these comments. Some blogs will turn a profit (of course the definition is loose), some will make some “play money” for the owner, some will support their business and turn profits in other areas and some will make nothing. I guess it all depends on what the blogger wants to get out of it. If they want to make money I think the framework is there for them to do so, Jeremy Wright is certainly providing this, he is about to make another $1600.

Some of me also wonders will all this focus on money causes blogs to lose their attraction before they really become mainstream? Maybe I am just naive?

Recruiting in the future

Heather Leigh (of Microsoft fame) posted an interesting item on the possible new .jobs domain. She ponders the world of this new domain and the impact on the commercial job boards and they they might have then focus on tools that allow the seeker to search for jobs across the domain. Some of her thoughts are similar to the post I made about a month ago on forward thinking recruitment ideas. I agree with Heather such changes would have a significant impact on a recruiter and the candidate, but I am not sure we need a new TLD to make these things happen. Many of the changes Heather talks about could be accomplished today with usage of technology we have today, a big hurdle is how do we change the practice of the job seeker and job boards to participate?

Personally I had heard the domain was not going anywhere very quickly, but I could be wrong. I am also not familiar with the TLD process so I could be completely off with the items below. If I am off I would like to find out more from others in the know.

Heather also refers to a post on Gerry Crispin’s site. Gerry has some good ideas, however I am concerned by SHRM wanting to control the domain. Certainly SHRM had the foresight to put together a proposal to ICANN earlier this year. Certain elements of the proposal have me raising an eyebrow and asking “huh?”. For example only qualified applicants can apply for registration which is fairly normal, however the definition of qualified I feel is limited and open for poor interpretation.

A qualified applicant (“Qualified Applicant”) is a person who is (a) a member of SHRM; or (b) engaged in human resource management practices that meet any of the following criteria: (i) possess salaried-level human resource management experience; (ii) are certified by the Human Resource Certification Institute; or (iii) are supportive of the SHRM Code of Ethical and Professional Standards in Human Resource Management, as amended from time to time (the “Code”).

The proposal does go on to say that a member of a company can be deemed a qualified applicant, to allow for smaller organisations to apply. Some of the initial feedback to ICANN states that the reader felt anyone authorised by their employer should be able to establish the domain, others just felt the domain as a waste of time and a grab for more domain revenue.

My of my thoughts is that how will a global company use the TLD? Will there be a .jobs.au? Or just a single domain for the organisation? If a single domain will large global organisation streamline their recruitment processes so that they are the same globally or will they differ by country as is the case with a majority of organisations? I know these are not issues which ICANN needs to resolve but they will need to be resolved for the global success of the TLD. Certainly such a TLD would open the door for some new innovative solutions for these organisations.

Thoughts from others would be good, as I suspect I am missing bits of the big picture.

More on hiring a blogger

Jeremy has posted a good summary on his blog as to why a company would to set up a blog. While I agree with all of his points, this post could be just seen as advertising for his auction. However I hope it is not the case, as he does offer some very valid points that organisations should consider when looking at if they should start a blog.

Jeremy talks about how a blog can add value to the organisation through several different mechanisms. These ideas will give any new blogger a good framework to work within.

I want to point out one thing with Jeremy’s post:-

So, why hire a blogger instead of just some writer off of eLance or
Guru.com? The short answer is that you don’t just want a writer. The blogging
consultant you hire should know how to write, know how to communicate (which is
an entirely different matter) and know the business and marketing drivers which
are likely to cause success or failure in this new venture.

I would say you don’t just want any blogger. You want one that that understands your business, ideally an internal evalgalist who will write for you ongoing once the hired blogger has departed. As Jeremy says you do not hire a golf pro for life, just to improve your golf game. This is very good advice and if you are looking to hire a blogger make sure they teach you the ropes and hlep you develop the environment so that when they are gone things sill continue.

But you also don’t hire a golf pro if you have no interest in golf, no time to play golf or no access to golf in the long term. In otherwords you only hire the golf pro because you have decided up fron thtat you can see value in the arrangement, the action of hiring the golf pro does not solve the no interest, no time etc issues. My point is you need to see the value in the arrangement before you begin, like the saying goes “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”.

Businesses to fund training

I read an interesting article in the Financial Review this morning (unfortunately I cannot link to the online article as it requires paid registration) about how the government is looking to force companies to invest in staff training if they wish to tender for government contracts. This comes on the back of the Department of Workplace Relations announcing last week that there will be a 7.7% annual increase in vacancies within the traditional trades.

It seems Gen-Y’s are just not taking to the traditional trades, instead they are getting university educations.

This coupled with the massive growth in over 65’s in the next 10 years is certainly going to be cause for concern for society in general.

Chatting to BlogosphereRadio

Just had a chat with Mack from BlogosphereRadio over Skype, the longest call (distance wise I’m in Sydney, Australia and he is in Edmonton, Canada) for either of us and it was crystal clear, I could now be a VOIP convert.

We chatted a bit about the blogger auctions (1 & 2) going on, watch this space as Mack plans to do a show on the topic (not to spoil his plans). This would mean I might be in my first podcast, exciting if it all happens.

Bloggers for hire

Ok, I have slept and think I have a clearer perspective and Blog your way summed up many of my thoughts very nicely. But here are my 2 cents worth anyway.

Basically the trouble I see with hiring a freelance blogger is how do you judge the end result? Just having someone writting words for your company turns it into a PR event. (Sorry to the PR folks out there.) Yes I think having a blog can do wonders for your PR, but having an external party write for you might not be the best method. I think if a company is really behind getting a blog going them they can find people internally to write.

Darren is addressing one of the important issue and that is helpping the company set up a blog. Setting up the blog for many small businesses could be one of the hurdles stopping them and through Darren and Jeremy‘s auctions they could help remove the hurdle.

Another issue I seem is how they both plan to introduce the blogging culture within the organisation so that after 3 months the whole thing does not stop. Essentially a blogger should be an evangelist for your organisation, like Scoble is for Microsoft or Jeremy Zawondy for Yahoo. An evangelist should love your product or service and believe in it. It is this bit I see as lacking in both auctions, and maybe in many of the PR focused corporate blogs. A corporate blog (or blogs) should have ownership within the organisation it should be nurtured and developed as part of the oraganisations culture. If we know anything about people changing a culture from the outside is VERY difficult if not impossible. I hope the guys know a bit about change management cuase they might need it.

Anyway I guess on Dec 3rd we will all know how much a blogger costs (on eBay that is) and Mar 3rd we should be able to see the results.

Another blogger for hire

Following Jeremy Wright, now Darren Barefoot is auctioning his services. The idea must be catching on.

Darren seems very qualified for write a blog, as he says he has 75,000 visitors a month, which lets just say is a few more than me :-).

I agree with Splatt it will be interesting to see the value placed on these bloggers via eBay. But over the last couple of days I have been questioning the whole idea. Buying the services of a blogger is fine if you want “just another PR” device. But I personally feel it kind of misses the point of blogging. Maybe I am just missing the point.

Anyway I might sleep on this thought and see how I feel tomorrow.

Is the world broke?

After another very hot weekend in Sydney (38-40C or 100-104F) we got home tonight and decided (in a second on stupidity) to order Pizza Hut. Boy what a mistake.

Initially the order taker denied our voucher because she did not know about it, then my wife tried to call them back to complain. Then things what really bad. Lets just say after 3 phone calls to the call centre, two deliveries, a call from to the call centre, a call to the call centre manager and a call to the customer complaints, we finally got what we tried to order, which they said did not exist, and we are still missing the $2 they over charged us. Only to add insult to injury while I was cleaning up I found another voucher offering the same thing, oh and $1.95 cheaper.

Now I log into Blogger and find they still think I have 99 posts, when by my count I have 130, I know not a lot but still.