Interesting discussion in this Wall Street Journal article about the viability of blogs making money. The discussion takes place between Jupiter Media’s Alan Meckler and Weblogs, Inc.’s Jason Calacanis. Alan’s take is that 99.999% of blogs just aren’t going to make money.
True - that’s why you’ve got to learn how to research a topic for profitability before you start your blog. Some topics just aren’t going to attract advertisers and are harder to monetize. Some topics can draw hordes of visitors but little revenue. Take computer gaming versus home improvement. My guess is that computer gaming is a more popular topic in terms of traffic but the CPM for ads is much lower. That means you need less traffic to achieve an equivalent amount of revenue with the latter topic.