Sunday, February 1, 2009

Bloggers

Going bust

Now this is pretty funny. Pajamas Media, a blogging network that actually paid bloggers to post their bits, was losing money from the beginning, with the CEO saying that people were getting their checks from a "stipend", which his laid-off bloggers took to mean...welfare. Bloggers are mad, and Pajamas Media has washed its hands off the whole enterprise.

Now, I don't really know how people make "full-time" salaries from blogging, although a few have claimed to do so. Most make money off donation drives. One financial adviser to the PJ Media, who was unceremoniously dropped very early on, explains that if you are a narrow and well-defined blog with the potential to sell specific products, like a photography blog which can sell camera-related items, then you have some chance of making a living out of your ads on your blog. Otherwise, it takes a lot of work and marketing to get it all going. Hence the lack of success for PJ Media to make any profit.

I used to have Google ads on my side panel. But, I started getting Muslim dating ads regularly since I blog on Muslim issues. I didn't like that, so I just discontinued them. I made $0 out of them, anyway (thank God?)