Making Money

Doc Searls, session leader

Bloggercon III
84 minutes, 38.7mb, recorded 2004-11-06
Doc Searls
How would you like it if, every time you got a phone call, you had to listen to an advertisement as well? Have you ever asked, How do I make money with my telephone? Or, What's the business model of my telephone? Or, What's the business model of my water cooler? My front porch? My patio?

Doc Searls believes it's far more important (and interesting) to make money because of our blogs, rather than with them; just as we make money because we have phones rather than with our phones.

There are exceptions. Some of us make money by selling on the phone. If that's you, think about what trying to sell over your blog (instead of the phone) would do to your relationships with readers.

Of course, lots of people use advertising to defray the costs of blogging. But how interesting is that, once you're past describing whatever it takes to get going with Adsense or Blogads?

On the plus side, blogging and can bring high rates of return in authority and respect -- just starting with Google juice. In that context alone, blogging is at worst a small expense and at best a high-return investment. Advertising is gravy.

How can we make the most the innate value of blogging as an activity, rather than as a medium?

You'll find blog coverage of this session by:
Dave Burke
Renee Blodgett
Richard MacManus
Doc Searls (includes links to other reports)

See the complete IT Conversations archives of sessions from Bloggercon III.


This free podcast is from our Bloggercon series.