I spent three years or so writing for two big, A-list political/feminist blogs. So I know a thing or two about blogging, and what to expect from it. And more importantly, what NOT to expect from it.
And what you can NOT expect from blogging is that readers pay you for the content you put out there for free.
Not that you can’t make some money from a blog. But it’s important to understand just what it is that makes the money. See, it’s not your content. It’s your audience. Because where you make your money on a blog is from advertising, and the rates for advertising are dependent on your audience, both its size and its perceived interests. If your blog has a large audience of the kind of people who advertisers think will spend money on their products (such as food blogs or Apartment Therapy), you can charge them to access your audience via paid advertising. If you don’t have much of an audience (or your audience is not perceived as the type to spend money*), you won’t be able to charge much. You attract the audience via content or widgets or what have you, but don’t kid yourself that it’s your writing that pays the bills.
Newspapers, magazines, radio and TV work the same way — I did a few years in journalism back in the day as well, and I can tell you that the size of the paper is not determined by how much news there is, but by how much advertising was sold for the day.** Indeed, when the paper goes to layout, the number of pages is determined by the number, size and placement of the ads, with the total ad space over a certain percentage of the available space. What is left is called the “news hole.” So when your editor wants 12 column-inches on a story, that means that that’s all the space you have available to you for your content, even if what you have is really a 16-inch story. Your content, in a way, is immaterial to the business side of the operation (and there is a division, traditionally, between editorial and business), except inasmuch as it brings in readers, increases circulation, and makes it easier for them to sell advertising at good rates. Your content, in other words, is a delivery vehicle for the ads, which is the profit-generating part of the business. This holds true even if you’re a blogger for a traditional-media outlet and get paid for your content. As Roy Edroso said in response to Dan Collins’ asking him about what kind of welfare the Village Voice gave him:
Keep this under your hat, but the Voice sells ads and uses the money to pay us. That’s capitalism, comrade, and as much as you and I dislike it, it’s the deal we’re stuck with.
Dan, you may or may not know, writes for Protein Wisdom, which was one of the right-wing blogs supported by Pajamas Media (he took offense to Roy’s characterization of the Pajamas Media arrangement as “welfare” and decided to hurl it back, without understanding that there is more than one model out there). At least until Roger Simon and the boys pulled the plug on the financial support they were giving the blogs, in favor of putting money into PJTV, which is a subscription-model podcasty sort of thing. Mostly, it seems to involve stilted videos by Dr. Helen supporting the patriarchy. And Joe the Plumber.
Mind you, unlike blogs, newspapers have separate advertising reps, whose entire job it is to sell advertising space and thus generate revenue. Blogs generally rely on ad networks to sell ad space, with varying results. Another problem is that advertisers underpay (or bypass) blogs due to faulty perceptions. But if you’re going to make money at blogging as a blog owner,*** you have to devote a certain percentage of your time and brainspace to the business side of things.
But let’s say that you find advertising generally abhorrent (or the kinds of ads you’re being asked to accept go against your values), and you don’t want to accept ad money. But you still want to make a living blogging. What do you do?
In the media world, unless you’re putting out a zine for the sheer joy of it, you’d probably form a non-profit and a foundation to raise money for operating expenses, and you’d rely on subscriptions much more than you would if you sold ads. And — here’s the really important part — you wouldn’t give your content away for free. **** Oh, you might offer teasers here and there to get readers interested, but you wouldn’t give it away for free and then complain if nobody paid for it.
But that’s what happens when you follow a theory of blogging that seems to be based on the business plan of the Underpants Gnomes (1. Steal underpants. 2. ????? 3. Profit!). If you don’t take advertising, and you don’t put your content behind a pay wall, your only options for generating income from your blog are pretty much a) sell stuff; b) use the blog as a marketing tool to promote your for-pay writing; c) ask for donations. Option d) wingnut welfare, didn’t work out too well for the Pajamas Media folks, and there’s no equivalent organization on the left anyhow, despite all the talk of George Soros pulling strings.
Selling stuff? Well, unless your business is making stuff for sale, then you probably won’t make all that much from it. And you can’t make any money from it if you decide that you won’t have a Cafe Press store because it’s too much work.
Using the blog as a marketing tool: This is what a number of feminist bloggers and other lefty bloggers have done. Some have used their blog-seeded reputations to move into paid media or political campaign/consultant positions (e.g., Glenn Greenwald, Ezra Klein, Peter Daou); others maintain their personal blogs while using them as launching pads and advertising for paid freelance writing or book deals (e.g., Roy Edroso, Kate Harding, Jessica Valenti). But again, if you don’t want to put in the effort to find the paid gigs, or you think that going after paid gigs somehow compromises your blogging, you’re not really going to make any money off the blog that way.
That leaves donations. Which do actually bring in money, sometimes, if you ask for them and your readership is inclined to and able to give you something. Bloggers often do this kind of thing for short-term or limited purposes, which they usually state up front: Hey, the blog’s getting huge and we know you’re complaining about loading problems, but the thing is, we need to move to a dedicated server and that costs money. Please consider donating. Hey, the pipes broke in my basement and I’m in a jam because of this sudden expense, and I hope you’ll consider helping me out. Hey, I lost my job and I need surgery and it’s critical that I make COBRA payments or I’ll lose my coverage and never be able to get new insurance with a pre-existing condition. Please help out.
But here’s the thing about donations: they’re completely voluntary. They’re not wages “owed” to you for the work you put in to the blog; they’re gifts. And gifts are only tokens of appreciation when they’re given freely, not demanded or the result of guilt-tripping.
What you absolutely do not have is an entitlement to donations. If people don’t donate, you can’t force them to, and it’s really bad form to try to shake them down via guilt-tripping and a really warped view of the terms of the blogger-reader relationship. It’s also bad form to refuse to answer questions from potential donors about what the money will be used for or to shoot down suggestions for making donating easier for them. You know, the ones with the money? The money you want?
Remember what I said earlier about advertising rates being based on the size of the audience? Well, A-lister status is the same way. You’re not an A-lister if you don’t have a large audience. So the blogger is getting something back from the audience; namely, prestige. The readers aren’t a drain on the blogger; they’re a value-add.
Another value-add is the contributors to a group blog, who are usually, with rare exceptions, uncompensated even when (i.e., HuffPo) there’s money behind the blog. That was certainly the case for me at Feministe because when I was there, the blog just wasn’t making a profit at all; since then, they’ve begun to make small payments to the co-bloggers as they’ve done more to monetize the blog. And I never got paid a dime from Shakesville.
Basically, blogging’s not a great way to make a buck, especially not political blogging (and most especially not feminist blogging). There are some few who’ve struck it lucky, but the very few political blog owners who’ve managed to make enough to make a living blogging***** have decided to treat their blogs as a business and do what they needed to do to bring in an income. That’s not, however, going to be possible for everyone, whether because advertisers aren’t drawn to your type of blog or because you don’t want to accept ad money. But even if you go the way of the nonprofit and rely on donations and subscriptions, you’re still not going to see any significant income unless you, again, treat the blog as a business, albeit a non-profit one. What you absolutely cannot do is take the Underpants Gnomes approach and just expect profit to happen without putting any of the required work into making it happen.
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* One of the things that killed Domino magazine was the fact that while its readers were loyal and it had a great subscription base, the readers were much more inclined to decorating via DIY projects rather than buying the expensive furnishings and decorating services featured in the ads; even if they really dug the aesthetic, they were much more likely to take something out of a flea market and re-create something from an ad than buy new. So advertisers stopped spending money there, and the magazine folded.
**You know, all the griping about bloggers killing off newspapers is bullshit. Two things are going on. First, newspapers still make money; it’s just that since the ’80s and ’90s, they started being bought up by media companies who wanted to run them to make profits rather than to report the news. Second, while the internet does pose a threat to newspapers, that threat doesn’t come from competing content providers. It comes from competing classified advertisers. Classifieds used to be the great cash cow of the newspaper because they had no competition, but now anyone can put up an ad on Craigslist for free and have responses right away. If you wait for the print edition, it’ll be stale by the time it’s out.
***There are really two kinds of writers for blogs: those who own the blog (blog owners) and those who write for the blog without any ownership (contributors). I’ve been both; at Feministe, I was a co-blog owner, even if Jill really handled all the administrative stuff, though she consulted with the other co-bloggers; the model there was collaborative. At Shakesville, I was a contributor and had no say in administrative matters.
I didn’t see a dime from my work for either blog. Which I was okay with, because neither blog was making any money. Had money started coming in, yes, I would have expected to be paid *something* for my work, even a nominal amount. This is particularly true when one is a contributor, because if your work contributes to the value of the blog (say, through increased page views, or you bring with you a built-in audience, as I did, or you increase the blog’s diversity of viewpoints) and you see nothing of the resulting profit, it’s an exploitative relationship (this is the kind of thing that’s making the HuffPo look bad next to The Daily Beast, which not only gives its contributors exposure to a large audience, it pays them). When you’re an owner or co-owner, you’re responsible for generating the profit. You take both the risks and the rewards. And if you don’t care to do use the tools available for monetizing the blog, then you pretty much have to resign yourself to not making any money. (Here, I have sole and complete control, but I lose money because I don’t bother to do what I need to do to monetize, like build an audience. I deliberately keep it small here.)
**** PBS and NPR give away their content for free and ask for subscriptions, you say? Well, sort of. First, they’re required to give their content away for free because they use the public airwaves. But they have foundational support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as well as a donor base. They also sell advertising, only they call it “underwriting” to keep it classy. But as far as the pledge drives go, they always tell you how much they want to raise, the progress of fundraising, and they make a case for why you should support the channel/station.
***** There are more blog contributors who make a living. How? They might have their name on the masthead of the blog, but like Andrew Sullivan, they’re employees of a media outlet, not blog-owner entrepreneurs.
Glad someone else has noticed this. I’d sigh and elaborate, but I suspect we’re on the same page here.
I once asked a blogger where my donation would be going. One of the blogging team sneered at my question, mocking me for wanting to know where my money goes.
Needless to say, I didn’t donate, nor do I read that blog anymore. But if you put a “Donate” button here, I’d click it!
You’re not alone, evil fizz.
I think that, to the extent that someone wants to treat blogging as a “full-time job” and not a hobby, they should perhaps sit down and put together some sort of business plan (even one they never show to anyone else) to figure out, concretely, how said blog is going to generate revenue. And some of that revenue calculation can include donations (a la public radio), but then those donation drives need to be regularly scheduled and explain exactly what the funding is going for (again, a la public radio). Magically expecting people to give you money because you happen to need it isn’t actually a viable revenue model.
And when you’re perfectly capable of getting full-time, part-time or temporary work (like almost every other blogger) and you even THINK of taking money out of people’s unemployment checks and child support payments, I think it’s time you have a little sit-down with yourself to reassess what it is you’re trying to accomplish.
Thanks for articulating everything that was bothering me the other day. I didn’t like what I read but I didn’t quite know why.
Thanks.
Heh. Indeedy.
Indeed. Thank you for articulating my own thoughts so much more charitably.
“the very few political blog owners who’ve managed to make enough to make a living blogging***** have decided to treat their blogs as a business and do what they needed to do to bring in an income.”
That.
“And you can’t make any money from it if you decide that you won’t have a Cafe Press store because it’s too much work.”
And that.
Doing your work, delivering content, writing, organizing, project management, etc. is one part of the job. Monetizing that work is ANOTHER part of the job, equally important if you want money from your work. Like my six-year old cousin says, it’s like the pipe and the faucet - you need both to bring water to you as and when you want it. Not very different from a regular job where you may work very well, but you *also have to draft your resume and interview well and negotiate for pay upfront and at regular intervals* in order to be compensated.
I don’t understand how any fundraising drive can reasonably be successful if a goal isn’t articulated to the people with cash. The goals of a new server, payment for surgery, tickets to a conference, etc., along with progress reports of how close the blogger is to the goal, makes sense. Any sort of rando salary demand, without even articulating what you think is a fair salary or how close you are to it, doesn’t really seem like its going to be successful.
now I’m sure we’re all referencing the same thing
ahem. Every writer that I know here in NY who actually makes a living from writing, spent years hustling for jobs, freelancing and spending hours upon hours trying to get paid what they’re actually owed, taking shit jobs because that’s how you get your foot in the door, working as typists, secretaries, word processors, etc. in order to pay the bills while writing at night, and doing things that they hate in order to finance the thing that they love.
I will also point out that is outrageously obnoxious to ask for donations and when someone asks you to account for them or have a widget that tracks your goals or whatever to respond with “I already do enough work, so, no.” If you’re going to ask for favors, you cannot expect people to blindly hand over money and never wonder what you’re doing with it.
I’m speechless.
This needed to be said. I’m afraid certain types of emotional “blackmail” are particularly harmful to some vulnerable populations, particularly when perpetrated by people in positions of relative power and trust. Thank you for saying it all so clearly.
And the analogy of an employer asking what an employee is doing with their money is incredibly flawed. An employee has a legal agreement with the employer that benefits the employer in specific, concrete ways. And the employee has specific requirements to meet and will come up for review.
Blog readers come and go all the time, there’s no formal relationship. They might read one blog or a hundred, and they aren’t going to be paying every single writer they read.
Employers don’t ask employees what they’re doing WITH their money - they ask “What are you doing to EARN this money?”
Apparently when you ask certain bloggers that question, you’re a hateful person who just wants to make work for other people.
The first principle of responsible charitable giving is being sure how your money will be spent. If one possible recipient is less than clear, give elsewhere.
What you absolutely do not have is an entitlement to donations.
Exactly.
Nor is any community the work of one person alone whose time is more worthy of monetary reward than the time of others.
Here via the Apostate. I read the Shakesville link and I’m absolutely appalled at the tenor of those threads. These people are nothing more than shameless beggars, except that beggars are usually genuinely poor. I’ve no intention of subsidising this entitled, privileged woman’s decision to mess about on the internet - and the poor woman who had 5 dollars left on her child support? Augh. This Melissa creature should be thoroughly ashamed of herself and apologise to her readers. Or else have her blog subscription only, instead of implying that her passive-aggressive whining is the only way “feminists” can do “women’s work”
She needs to send out her CV and seek a real job, just as I’m obliged to do now.
Just thinking of what I said in my last comment, it may be a bit heated to let through. Suffice it to say that I think the way Shakesville are going about soliciting money is disgraceful, unprofessional, uncompassionate and downright sexist - and leave it at that!
Thanks for stopping by. New commenters get held automatically in the mod queue, so it wasn’t the content of your post that put it there.
Wow, that was a really interesting and well-thought-out post! I am a regular reader of Shakesville and felt kinda uncomfortable when the issue of donations came up, but I wasn’t really sure why. Your post really cleared some things up for me (and made me think about even more things), so thanks a lot for that!
Wow…way to turn on a former friend.
What exactly does that mean, Kristin?
How am I “turning on” anyone by explaining how blog financing works?
Moreover, consider the “former” you used there. I’m not quite sure what you mean by it, but have you considered that there might be a reason for the “former” designation?
The tone of your post, to me, came across as you calling out Melissa as whiny and entitled for thinking that she could ask for donations for her work. And I know Melissa isn’t mentioned by name in the post, but you do mention Shakesville a couple of times, and it’s pretty clear who you’re talking about. It came across almost as an argument that you’d had in private with Melissa that you then decided to publish. I don’t know what the background is behind your leaving Shakesville, but that was my take on it.
God forbid I should mention the name of the blog where I wrote. For free, I might add.
and god forbid somebody should say out loud when someone else is shitty towards the people who support her. I thank you, Zuzu, even though I’m not one of those supporters you inadvertantly stuck up for, while, I might add, actually writing a brilliant analysis of blogging and earning/not earning money at it. The emperor’s new clothes bullshit gets tiring.
Zuzu spends at least three paragraphs explaining that asking for donations is pretty standard blogger practice.
Kristin, you may not like the tone, but as Toonces points out, you clearly didn’t read for content.
For instance, the part where I said that bloggers routinely *ask* for donations. What I said wasn’t cool was *demanding* donations, or trying to *guilt-trip* people into giving.
If you’re going to get huffy about a post, at least do me the courtesy of reading it first.
i read very few group blogs, and so missed whatever brouhaha is being referenced, but you’re dead on here. all of it. thanks for writing it.
This.
This was the point where I was waiting for a mod to step in and say that she shouldn’t donate because she clearly needs the money herself (and for her children), but instead they encouraged her.
The fact that the readers were bending over backwards and making real sacrifices in their own financial security to send in support, but it’s “too much work” to explain what you’re going to do with the money? That’s when I realized the whole thing was just a little too f*cked up for my tastes.