Anne Helmond « TheNextWeb.com

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Bloggers, making money is not a crime

Written on October 27, 2008 – 10:38 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Last Friday, Amsterdam was the scene of Holland’s first international blog conference BLOG08. Pete Cashmore (Mashable), Loren Feldman (1938media.com), Hugh MacLeod (Gapingvoid), and Scott Rafer (Lookery) all crossed the ocean to tell the European crowd how they could turn their blog in a successful one. Two of them, namely Cashmore and Rafer, focused on monetizing blogs.

Nobody wants money?

When the Mashable founder asked the crowd about monetizing, something noteworthy occurred. Anne Helmond reports:

When asked, hardly anyone in the room actually wants to monetize its blog. Pete is kind of surprised, especially if he asks the same question in the US where everyone raises their hands.

Language barriers

At first, I wasn’t really surprised. After all, most BLOG08 attendees report for a rather small group compared to bloggers who write in English. A Dutch blogger for example, only has an audience of 17 million people. Americans have a crowd of at least 300 million readers at their disposal.

What did struck me as odd was the reluctant attitude of most visitors towards money. Like it’s some kind of crime.

More revenue means more time for blogging

I’ve been blogging for a year before I made some money out of it. And ever since I started doing that, my blogging skills improved. More revenue means more time for blogging. I was able to quit my sorry day job and spend more time on reporting about tech.

A precondition on making some money with blogging is writing in English. Simply because you can reach a larger crowd. That’s not something I came up with. No, one of Holland’s most remarkable journalists, Nico Haasbroek, once told me that.

Write your articles in English, German, or French, so you can sell them to any magazine or newspaper.

Content producers should not be involved with advertising

Sure, my English isn’t perfect yet. But thanks to the euros earned, I can soon start following some English lessons. While I’m doing that, I keep another rather important lesson in mind. As read in Michael A. Banks’ Blogging Heroes, stated by Ken Fisher from Ars Technica:

Content producers should not be involved with advertising, to avoid even the appearance of advertised-influenced content.

So, work your ass off, create great content, and find an advertising partner like Federated Media as soon as you can make money out of your blog.

[Photo credit: Floris Dekker]

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