There are many factors that affect how much a professional blogger will charge you to write blog content for you.  A dozen of the most common factors are as follows:

1. The blogger’s experience with blogging
2. The blogger’s experience on the social Web
3. The blogger’s experience in your industry
4. The blogger’s online reach and reputation
5. Whether the blogger will be ghost blogging or get a byline with links to his/her own site or blog
6. How long posts need to be on your blog
7. If you’ll provide post topics or the blogger will have to find topics to write about
8. If images are required in posts
9. If the blogger will have to categorize, tag, and manage add-ons or plugins that add time to publishing a post
10. If the blogger will have to moderate and respond to comments
11. If the blogger will have to promote the blog to drive traffic to it
12. How often blog posts need to be published

Each of the factors listed above affects the amount of time it takes for the blogger to write and publish a post on your blog and will therefore, affect how much a blogger charges you to produce that content.  Furthermore, the old adage, “you get what you pay for,” certainly holds true in blogging.  Experienced bloggers might charge $50 per 300-500 word post while an extremely popular blogger might charges hundreds of dollars per post.  On the other end of the spectrum, an inexperienced blogger might charge just $3-$5 to write a blog post for you.

The goal for your business is to hire a blogger who can write well, autonomously, and consistently in a voice and style that matches your business.  The blogger should also have experience in your business or the ability (and willingness) to learn about your business in order to write effectively for your audience.  Finally, the blogger you hire should be reliable and write well.  It won’t help you to hire a blogger whose posts need to be completely edited for grammar, spelling, and formatting.

Just remember, publishing content that is substandard, inaccurately reflects your brand, and is not helpful or shareworthy isn’t going to help your business grow significantly.  It’s worth it to pay for quality content from a blogger who knows what he or she is doing.  It’s your business’ reputation and future on the line after all.

Image: stock.xchng

Following are 5 commonly used business blogging guidelines to get you started in creating your own list:

1. Ask permission before publishing customer names and stories.

Your business blogger should not publish individual customers’ names or stories related to them without obtaining written permission to do so in order to respect their privacy.

2. Don’t attack competitors.

While it’s certainly fine to discuss how your business is different from competitors and the added benefits you deliver to consumers, you don’t want to publish overtly negative comments and posts about your competitors. Not only does it open your business up for a counter-attack, but it also hurts your business and brand to be associated with those types of conversations.

3. Take individual conversations, problems, or questions offline.

A business blog can serve as a broad customer relations tool, but it should not become a one-on-one customer service destination. Keep customer service-related conversations broad, meaning they appeal to a wide audience, and take specific customer service dialogue about individual customers’ issues offline.

4. Balance personality with professionalism.

A blog should be infused with the blogger’s personality but that personality must merge seamlessly with the business’ brand image and promise. Your business blogger should be allowed to let his or her personality shine through their posts and comments, but that personality should compliment the brand, else you run the risk of confusing or offending your audience and customers.

5. Stay on topic.

While a personal blog can stray from the core topic, a business blog has less flexibility in this area. Just as customers have expectations for a brand and they become loyal to a brand that consistently meets those expectations, they develop expectations for a business blog. Don’t stray too far from what your audience demonstrates that they want, need and expect from your business, brand and blog.

Image: stock.xchng

For example, be sure to include a list of requirements in your blogging job posting such as:

• How often the blog should be updated.
• If the blogger needs to monitor and respond to comments.
• If the blogger is expected to promote the blog and drive traffic to the blog.
• If the blogger is expected to include images in posts.
• If the blogger is expected to research and come up with blog post topics or if topics will be provided by you.

Each of these requirements affects the amount of time it takes a blogger to write a post, which means they also affect the rates bloggers are likely to charge.  It’s also important that you ask applicants to provide samples of their blog post writing and links to their work online as well as their social Web profiles so you can learn more about their skills and experience.

You have two options when it comes to addressing payments in your blogging job posting.  First, you can leave it open to negotiation if you’re not sure what to charge.  You’re likely to get a wide variety of payment requirements from applicants, and you’ll quickly learn to correlate experience and skills with reasonable payment requests.

Alternately, you can include a per post or per word payment structure in your blog post (which is recommended over per hour since it takes some people longer to write than others).  For example, you might find a capable blogger with little experience who charges just $5 per post (blog posts should usually be between 300-600 words for maximum effectiveness).  On the other hand, a highly experienced blogger might charge $50 per post.  The most influential and popular bloggers might charge hundreds of dollars per post.  Just make sure that the rate matches the blogger’s experience and abilities.

With those tips in mind, following are a number of places where you can publish blogging job openings and attract a wide variety of applicants:

1. BloggingPro: Splashpress Media offers a blogging job board on BloggingPro.  There are three types of listings: the first is free and the second two are paid featured listings and 30-day listings.
2. Problogger: Darren Rowse offers a blogging job board on his Problogger blog.  All listings are paid.
3. About.com Blogging: The About.com Blogging forum includes a Blogging Jobs discussion folder where job opportunities can be listed for free.
4. Job Listing Sites: Sites like Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, etc. provide places to list open jobs for a fee.
5. Freelancer Sites: Sites like Freelancer.com, iFreelance.com, Elance.com, Odesk.com, Guru.com, and others provide a way to list an open job for a fee for freelancers to bid on.
6. Craigslist: Believe it or not, a lot of bloggers search for jobs on Craigslist.  Most job postings on Craigslist are free, but a few local Craigslist sites do charge a fee to post a job.

Don’t be afraid to ask applicants to write a sample post for your blog (which you agree to publish only if the blogger is hired), so you can get an idea of the type of content they could bring to your blog.

If you’re looking for an effective solution to help get your blog noticed then the Contextual Partnership Plugin for WordPress bloggers could be well worth consideration. Perhaps the most attractive aspect is that there is no cost involved.

According to the developers the plugin is designed to;

Drive more targeted visitors to your blog (or blogs) by strategically linking your blog to and from other bloggers participating in the network. The exact method used to achieve this remains confidential but apparently it’s not a basic reciprocal link exchange – nor the more common 3 way linking arrangement often seen between bloggers.

Enhance the user experience for your blog visitors by providing them with links to other high quality blogs for further information on subjects of interest (and it can do this without you actually loosing the visitor which is a great feature).

Indirectly increase your search engine rankings by building highly relevant incoming links to your blog for keyword terms you define, related to your own niche market.

Not a bad indirect benefit at all.

To better understand how the network works, first you need to know what a “contextual link” actually is. A contextual link is simply a link “within content” of a blog post and “within context” of specific keyword terms in that post. For example the term “dog training” found within a blog post becomes a link out to another blog (related to “dog training”) within the network. Contextual Links are found all over the internet – bloggers interlink their own pages contextually, there are paid advertising programs that allow you to place contextual advertising links and earn per click, and bloggers naturally link out to other websites they find useful “contextually” as well.

This is the key to the “Contextual Partnership”. When you install and setup the WordPress Plugin, you’re asked to provide the URL’s you wish to advertise on other partners blogs, and the keyword terms you want those blogs to use to link back to your own. When a match is found within the network for the keyword terms you provide (and assuming it meets with the Contextual Partnership’s strategic linking methodology), a link back to your blog is assigned, and your account has a credit removed.
The amount of credits your account holds appears to be directly related to the number of links you’re providing to other partners in the network for the keyword terms they themselves are looking to use to advertise. Apparently for every link you provide for another partner, you earn 1 credit. That 1 credit is then “cashed in” to assign a link back to your own blog from other partners whenever a match is found for your own keyword terms. So if you already have 100 posts in your blog, and each of those pages finds a match to provide a link to another partner, then technically you could receive 100 incoming links to your blog as soon as you’ve been approved to participate in the partnership. You also continually earn more points and incoming links as you continue to blog and add more posts just like you usually do.

That’s the basic overview and you’ll find more specific information on the plugin website including details of many features not mentioned here (like the ability to select specifically which blog posts you want to include – or nor include in the network)…

http://www.contextualpartnership.com

Uptake by the blogger community seems to have been extremely good and this new service looks to become very popular. In the first two weeks of launch the partnership already had over 54,000 individual places to place links throughout the network, and within the first 4 weeks over 10,000 advertising links had been allocated between network partners. This is most likely a result to how easy it is to actually setup the plugin and participate – it literally takes 5 minutes to install and setup – although approval can take anywhere from 24-72 hours depending on the moderation queue as only high quality blogs are accepted to participate to keep out the splogs and spammers.
This seems to be one of those services worth giving a shot for a few months, and by the looks of things the developers have some exciting new features in the pipeline to make things even more effective for partners in the future.

You can find out full details and download the plugin below…

http://www.contextualpartnership.com

Or alternatively you can download the plugin directly from WordPress…

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contextual-partnership-link-exchange-plugin/

This is the problem I’ve always had with articles about “how to blog”, “how to get more traffic”, and “how to boost your RSS subscribers” — so many of these articles are written by blogs that have no business writing about these topics. Heck, even when I’ve had a blog with thousands of RSS subscribers I didn’t quite feel qualified to write on these topics because I knew I was still low on the totem pole. Of course you don’t have to be qualified to talk about a specific topic on your blog — you can talk about whatever you want — but I never wanted to do a potential disservice to my readers.

Opinions are like a**holes, everyone’s got one. Some people like to spam forums with links to their blog to gain traffic, and others like to write cohesive and witty comments. Obviously in that scenario you can figure out which is the better method, so why is the spammy tactic the one that so many people write about as an effective method for promoting your blog? One reason is that bombing forums with links is a common talking point on lists that give you “Top 100 Ways To Promote Your Blog” which are taken to heart by newer bloggers. Just because people include it in an article doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, so don’t take these lists at face value since many of them are created just to get traffic to their blog.

Blogs about blogging, articles about writing articles on your blog, when does the meta craziness end? Well just because information on blogging is abundant doesn’t mean that you should read one blog, one article, one author, and then call it the gospel. You need to fact-check your information, read a dozen lists and articles, create your own best practices, and then create strategies that work best for who you are, what your blog is about, and who you’re trying to reach. The same moral rules that apply in the real world also apply online, so whenever you come across a “tip” that seems a little shady, just ask yourself, “would doing this technique/method make me annoying to someone else?” and you’ll figure out what’s a bad idea and what’s not. It’s actually pretty simple, but sometimes the goal of having a check get mailed to you once a month is more alluring.

Don’t take tips from just anybody, in fact, don’t take tips from me at face value either. Read many things, decide for yourself, and then create strategies that still uphold your moral values. Doing everything that someone puts on a Top 100 list is a fast-track to nowhere. Doing a few things really well (like leaving smart comments, emailing authors that you appreciate, writing accurate & interesting entries) will get you well on your way and you didn’t even have to sacrifice your morals during the process.

If I were running a publishing company with a traditional blog network model (pay writers to write for you, you own the sites and reap the ad revenue, rinse and repeat) I’m not so sure I’d be excited to brand my company the world’s largest blog network based on size. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a large cache of sites at your disposal, but isn’t it easy to add more sites? The marginal cost of adding another blog is very low because you find a writer and pay them to start writing. You drop them into your default template with some colors switched out and away they go. You are now PREVIOUS_SIZE++.

But what about quality?

I’d say that the marginal cost of increasing the quality or popularity of your single blog is far higher than the marginal cost if increasing your network’s quantity. Like in the previous paragraph, increasing your quantity involves a particular routine — one that blog networks normally have down pat — but what about increasing quality? How does that happen? It’s not as easy as finding your next writer on the street and waiving some money in their face, quality takes both time and effort, two things that do not come quickly. Starting Blog #127 and going from 0 RSS subscribers to 100 RSS subscribers has an effort level of X and a timeline of Y. Moving Blog #127 out of the beginning stages and going from 100 RSS subscribers to 1000 RSS subscribers has an effort level of at least 5X and a timeline of at least 5Y. Starting and getting something going is not complicated, but continuing the upward trend and moving it higher is hard. Maybe that’s why it took 451 Press 300 blogs to make it to 10 million visitors per month because of this same pseudo-scientific formula from up above.

b5media is another traditional-type blog network, but they rank higher on the quality scale than 451 Press does because they’ve stopped adding “blogs every week” like 451 Press but seem to be working harder on the quality end of the spectrum instead of just increasing girth on the quantity end. In case you’re not aware, the celebrity news blog space is insane right now:

• Perez Hilton, one of the most popular celebrity sites on the web, supposedly pushes 26 million pageviews per week based on BlogAds numbers, oh and a premium Flash skyscraper ad for one month will cost over $52k.

It certainly takes more effort to raise a blog from nothing to 7 figure pageviews per week than to simply start 5 or 10 more blogs with no traffic. Celebrity blogs can attain high traffic figures quickly because they reach out to the younger mainstream audience, normally the types of people who are on your site every single day, commenting and participating. b5 has more than a few celebrity blogs, but one of their most popular has a singular focus on Lindsay Lohan one of the most searched for and popular celebs on the web. I’d guess that b5′s celebrity channel is doing so well that they could sink every single other blog they run, drop 2 more writers on each celebrity blog, and still boost revenue. Of course they’re not slacking off either, they write every single day….

….which is more than I can say for these fine 451 Press blogs.

Nick Douglas wrote a scathing entry saying that b5media doesn’t deserve any money. Normally a dissenting view isn’t such a bad thing, but when it’s written on one of the most widely-read blogs in the tech industry, that’s tough to see. A quote from Nick analyzing their investor’s reasoning:

“With information overload comes opportunities on a number of fronts. The most obvious is authority.” Which b5media doesn’t have. Why not invest in someone who’s already established some of that?”

Varun Mathur comments and asks some pointed questions about how b5media will get content into the hands of readers:

“Also, the rest of the “blogosphere” is an informal, disorganized “blogging network”, where a blog is being created every second. That is what b5media is up against. As a user, I am interested in specific post(s), and I don’t care which blog or blogging network the post belongs to. Now, what’s the most optimal way for me to find that specific post: going to b5media’s blogging network -> finding a blog -> finding the post OR using various search tools like google, technorati, icerocket to find exactly what I am looking for?”

Varun brings up a good point (one that their investor dodges) and that’s the problem of wrapping a Web 1.0 publishing model around blog content. Users now expect to find and consume their content in a variety of ways and aren’t happy when they’re forced to change. b5media currently hasn’t a way to view all posts from a specific channel category, no way to subscribe to multiple blogs in one feed, and no dashboard for the latest content across the network. Varun is like many people who want control over how they consume content, and that’s something b5media definitely has to work on. The guys at b5media are absolutely a smart bunch, so I’m sure that they’re hard at work on some new content dashboard/portal technology as I speak.

Phil Sim questions if blog networks are worth the money, and my answer for this will always be “it depends on what you’re trying to create.” Don Dodge was miffed after Om Malik took a few hundred thousand to build out his new media empire and I think it was definitely a smart move. The key to pay-for-your-writing blog networks is to build up brand recognition where the author and blog popularity eclipses that of the network — Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger.net has a gigantic following and if I were in b5′s shoes I’d build out services that leverage the ProBlogger audience and capture a larger segment of that industry. Weblogs, Inc. was purchased (essentially) for Engadget and Autoblog even though WIN has dozens of other blogs besides those but AOL wanted to individual brands since they are the most valuable. b5media could take their funding and build out some of their more popular blogs into their own verticals, similar to what Om is doing with his GigaOm Network.

Phil continues:

“You hear increasngly around the traps of blog and podcast networks who are locking their talent into really, tough contracts – ‘we own you mofo’ – and with these kind of economics vs risk you can see why.”

The Catch-22 of pay-for-your-writing blog networks is that the network is paying the author money to build up a site and their own recognition, and after they have a nice following it might make financial sense for them to pursue their own publishing efforts, whether that’s writing their own blog or anything else. Back two years ago Peter Rojas used to write for Gizmodo but left to write for its competing site, Engadget, and his audience came with him to make Engadget the largest tech/gadget weblog on the planet. Personal branding and recognition go a long way, so the key is to give authors a big enough paycheck reason to stay once they taste the fruit from the self-publishing tree.

Say some of b5media’s blogs get really large and have a nice following — what’s stopping Jason Calacanis from offering a salary 3x as large if they come work for AOL/Weblogs, Inc.? If any of their writers are motivated more by money than by passion, it could be a real problem for b5 or for any other blog network.

And for the conspiracy theorists out there, here’s a quote from Jeremy Wright circa this past Spring:

“We won’t accept funding that: 1) significantly takes away from doing “the work” [or] 2) requires us to have an exit strategy”

Could the investment of $2 million not have been an equity deal, but convertible debt? It’s pretty much a standard deal that venture capital firms only make money from an exit strategy (acquisition or IPO) so with Jeremy being against the idea of an exit strategy maybe the deal wasn’t VC ownership after all?

Regardless of the positive or negative comments, it takes effort for any company to raise a round of funding and for that b5media should be commended. On the other hand, this now puts a lot of pressure onto the backs of the founders and authors to make their investment back, so in the upcoming months we’ll see the path they take.

Professional blogging means different things to different people, but the common thread is that you are essentially producing your blog with the intent of making money as either the sole purpose, or one of the top purposes. I’m no authoritative voice on pro blogging since I don’t write here for that purpose, but here are the various ways people can earn money in the blog world:

• Start a blog, make it big — Sites like Dooce weren’t started with an ulterior profit motive, they were created because the author wanted to voice their opinions on various topics. Over time (and thanks to various mainstream media mentions) her blog became so oft-visited that she threw ads up there and now writes full-time thanks to sponsors.
• Start a blog, make it semi-big, start more just like it — It’s difficult to produce a blog that gets a ton of visitors, but it’s less difficult to produce a blog that gets a fair amount of visitors. If you produce a blog that makes say $500-$1,000 per month from all advertising (AdSense, Text Link Ads, affiliate, etc.) then it’s normal to think, “why not have a few of those?” You then start up a few more blogs, write with the same amount of gusto as the first one, and now you’re making a few thousand a month from 3-4 blogs. This is sometimes a precursor to an individual creating their own “blog network” in an effort to span traffic across their blogs.
• Start a blog, get some traffic, slap some ads on it, start a dozen more — Another version I see is the blog that’s a fine line between a splog and just a link-heavy weblog. Typically these are news-based (instead of opinion-based) with either a longish quote from another site and a link-out, or a quick paragraph summary and then a link-out. Rarely do you see long opinion pieces on these types of sites, mostly the content there is produced in an effort to publish frequently and get relevant AdSense ad blocks up.

This isn’t an exhaustive list but it does show some of the more common ways people make money from their blog. The common threads in my opinion are the drive to constantly produce content and the goal of making money. If you replace “produce content” and swap in “innovate” I think that’s basically any entrepreneur’s mentality. Professional blogging and starting a company seem to be pretty similar — find something you believe in and put your head down until you’re successful.

The Fallacy?
Besides money, the other common thread is that bloggers trying to earn a living from their blogs have full ownership of their sites. I have no experience writing for other blogs if I don’t own them, but that’s a growing trend now with some blog networks. The majority of blog networks pay writers to post entries on network-owned blogs, and although they do pay out percentages (or flat rates with the larger networks) I think the writer is still making less than they could on their own. Starting your own blog and building an audience is difficult, but you get to decide on the layout, design, branding, URL, topics, ad placements, etc., but if you write for someone else’s blog you definitely don’t keep all the money, and you probably don’t have a lot of say over what ads to run, where they’re placed, the name of your blog, the design, etc.

For example, Medium Dreams is a blog owned by b5media.com with a three-column layout that’s used on nearly all their blogs. A horizontal AdSense link bar is on the very top of the page, followed by a header graphic, and then the three columns have a large square AdSense block atop the right two. The layout is pretty standardized, and I imagine if the author said they wanted to produce a hot layout like Shaun Inman, Jason Santa Maria, or Veerle (with different columns, colors, typography, ad placements, etc.) I’d imagine the answer would be no.

Making Lots of Money
I know a lot of people who make 4 figures or more from their blog per month, and they all own their blog. I’ve heard that blog networks (other than Weblogs, Inc and Gawker) really can’t outlay the thousands per month it takes for somebody to be a full-time blogger, so they pay a lower flat rate or a percentage. Now here comes my theory which could be totally wrong, but here goes:

People that are paid writers for a blog they don’t own (and aren’t paid nearly full-time wages) are less passionate for the blog medium.

People who love blogs as a medium have had them for awhile, have been tinkering with their blog, adjusting the layout, messing with the design, and are writing constantly.

People who are paid to blog for others seem to only do it for the quick money. They don’t want to be bothered with the responsibility of hosting (a few bucks a month) or monetizing (copy and paste ad code) or tweaking (isn’t layout tweaking supposed to be fun?) so they leave that up to someone else. They write not because they love the topic (because if they did, wouldn’t they have already started their own blog?) but because they could make $50, $100, maybe a few hundred dollars per month. It seems to me that if someone was truly passionate about their topic they’d be actively working on their own site on that topic, posting furiously, trying to build something of value.

To me, starting your own blog and working it up is like being an entrepreneur with an innovative business idea, whereas writing for someone else’s blog is like buying a Taco Bell franchise — no real innovation, no creativity.

So all that being said, I have a challenge to the professional bloggers out there who blog for networks and don’t own their sites: are you making a living from this? I’m not talking a few hundred or a thousand a month, do you make enough from your unowned sites that you can pay rent/mortgage, utilities, car payments, etc. etc.? I’ve yet to find someone who makes that much off of sites they don’t own, so if you’re that person I want to hear from you.

Congrats to Om and our friends at True Ventures for making this happen, because big things are ahead!

UPDATE: Om has the “scoop” at his blog and discusses the plusses and minuses behind his decision.

How To Fake Like You Are Big And Popular

The title of this section is a play on the famous Frank TJ Mackey monologue from the movie Magnolia, and I think it’s oddly appropriate somehow. Here’s the deal with blog traffic: if you have been doing it for awhile (years, not months) and have tons of inbound links, then you are one of the “rich” and will continue to get more money for ads and traffic providing that your content quality does not diminish. If you are new or relatively new to blogging, and you think that your traffic will skyrocket and stay there overnight (not the Digg effect) then you will probably find out the hard way that building your weblog’s traffic up from nothing is a very difficult task — the power-law distribution applies to weblogs too.

So if you don’t run an already-popular blog, and are trying to make it big-time, what can you do? Well here’s where the rule-breaking list comes in. For every rule there’s an exception, and if you’re starting your blog and possess some of these qualities, then you’re already ahead of the curve:

• If you’ve worked in some capacity in the mainstream media, or in the niche you plan to write about, then you’re already ahead of the game. Michael Arrington only started the hugely successful TechCrunch this past summer, however before starting that he was a venture capitalist and a corporate attorney working in the technology sector so he already knew various people within his topic area.
• You’re an amazing writer with a passion for the medium, with tons of drive and moxie. You work late at night and early in the morning, you scour the web for the latest information, you break news rather than link to it, you’re an innovator and not just a reblogger.
• One of the oldest “tricks” in the book is to break some cool news and then persuade an A-list blog to link to you, instantly inundating you with traffic. Paul’s Damn I’m Cute celebrity blog routinely gets linked by the larger gossip blogs like Gawker and A Socialite’s Life, and because of that he’s probably going to crack 65k pageviews per day soon and force me to pay out on a bet we made a few months back. Nothing brings traffic like funny pics of celebrities.
• Get your networking on, and I’m not talking about the virtual kind. If your new blog talks about “web 2.0″ and/or venture-backed startups, then get yourself over to the Bay Area so you can start attending geek dinners amongst your fellow tech brethren. We east coast people tend to frown upon the “bring your laptop to the bar and geek-out at 2am” type of thing, but celebrities and gossip are prime New York City topics. The music scene in Austin, politics in D.C., and other area-specific topics are good stomping grounds as well.
• Be Media 1.0 and have a gala launch event — it will get you press, but you might lose the respect of the independent blog world afterwards. Open Source Media (now Pajamas Media) booked the Rainbow Room for their launch, hired a top-tier speaker, and invited the press to their invite-only launch party. It gained them lots of facetime with the mainstream media, however the blogosphere reacted with some disdain. If you’re in the market for big traffic with no real scruples, gala launch events will get you what you crave.
• Join 9rules, the largest weblog network dedicated to independent blogs already written by passionate writers. Some of our most popular members started out with only a few dozen pageviews per day, and now have hundreds of feed subscribers and steady traffic that is growing daily. We only pick less than 10% of the weblogs who apply, but if you make it in then you’re in some great company.

So does the power-law distribution hold true for the blog world, yes it does, but these are some ways you can boost yourself ahead of the pack. Just like there are exceptions to every rule, there are ways to start a phenomenally popular weblog without being rich and famous beforehand.

Corkforce.com, a wine enthusiast weblog, is up for auction at Sitepoint.

We’ve recently had great success selling sites and domains in the forums there, so give it a look, and throw your bid down for this quality weblog. Bidding ends in a week!

The deal, which also includes placements on Gizmodo, Gawker’s earlier gadget title, will cost Sony in the range of $25,000 a month, according to a source close to the deal. The sponsorship runs for about three months.
—Kris Oser

This deal is nearly unparalleled in the rest of the blog world, and caught myself and others I shared the news with completely by surprise. Denton and his Gawker Media empire are firmly planting themselves in the forefront of this new medium, and the only thing that slows them down periodically are sites that don’t do as well as Fleshbot or Gizmodo. In the article Denton mentioned that both Kinja and Kotaku didn’t get the traffic he was looking for and were considered “flops”, but two out of X ain’t that bad.

Then the ads came.

Blogging is definitely a much more mature medium than it was a couple of years ago. Now, many of the top bloggers are making a decent living from their blogs. Granted these bloggers are in the minority compared to the entire blogging population, it goes to show that traffic (aka eyes-glued-to-your-page) sells.

There may be a case where your company starts a blog and it becomes immensely popular. If you are smart (and somewhat lucky) your company will create an industry blog that becomes the place to turn for expert views for that industry. If that happens then without a doubt you will have companies looking to sponsor your blog.

However, many people feel that advertisers kill the purity of the blog format. Even worse are “sponsored entries” that show up on blogs because a company has requested that the blogger write about their product.

This scenario will grow quickly in the very near future. Blogging is enjoyable and if you can make money from the practice, it becomes even more enjoyable. The down side is that many readers will consider the blog to become just another sellout and I do believe that would be the case if the money began to dominate the content.

Well placed, non-obtrusive ads are fine to many and completely understandable to most. As long as the trust between writer and reader is not broken the ads should cause no harm.

Salesman, Blogs, and Fark

First here is the order of events:

• Fark.com sells their editorial, and the loyalty of their users
• My Farking Followup
• Final thoughts on Fark.com
• Fark Sells Out. France Surrenders

After reading the above articles, the following two things should be abundantly clear.

1. Popular blogs, like Calacanis’, have major pull when it comes to major industry publications like Wired.com. Especially during months when news is quite slow.
2. If you are going to post advertorial content, then make sure the world knows it was paid for. Otherwise you have to fight the people which come out quickly in masses.

Is it okay to make money from your blog? Yes. Is it okay to write sponsored entries that are clearly labeled as “sponsored?” Yes. Is it okay to betray the trust of your readers? The trust that gained you the audience and what helps to keep your audience growing? No.

Blogs are meant to be a transparent medium and therefore everything involved in the site should be made transparent. Ads are ads. Don’t try to trick your readers. Readers are smart; sooner or later they figure things out.