Media Blogging for Bucks -- Part Time

Nick Denton, former Financial Times correspondent and ex-CEO of Internet news aggregator Moreover, is busily engaged these days trying to build a weblog business that makes money.
Unlike in the go-go days of the Internet, Denton is thinking small this time. His Gizmodo weblog (covering technological gadgets) is operated with 1/4 of the time of a writer/editor (Peter Rojas). Denton's next, Gawker (a Manhattan-gossip blog), relies on one 1/2-time writer/editor (Elizabeth Spiers). Denton estimates that costs for maintaining a small commercial weblog like those are $1,000 to $2,000 a month.
Growth in audience is mostly viral (i.e., no paid marketing campaigns), and revenues come from online retail affiliate referral fees, mostly, and some advertising. He estimates that a successful small blog should pull in $5,000 a month in revenues within six months, as long as the concept is sound and attracts an audience. "That's better (return) than conventional publishing," he says. Denton's weblog strategy: Grow big by building lots of small publishing enterprises. None of this is new, he points out -- the emphasis is simply on keeping publishing costs very low.

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