The SF Chronicle â€" a newspaper that has long been rumored to be suffering from the myriad challenges facing the newspaper industry â€" weighs in with a close look at blogger economics. Business reporter Sam Zuckerman zooms in most closely on TechCrunch, the Silicon Valley-based tech blog that most industry watchers regard as the bellwether for commercial blogs.
TechCrunch illustrates the new blogging math. It sells sponsorships that allow advertisers to display on the home page at $10,000 per month. It also uses Federated Media to sell display ads, keeping 60 percent of the revenue. And it charges $200 to list in its Cool Jobs section, getting about five or six want ads per day. Parties and conferences add another income source. Last month, TechCrunch organized a two-day event at the Palace Hotel that gave 40 startups a platform to tout their wares.
And, as far as spending goes, "our costs are only headcount," Arrington said.
Let's assume that newspapers need to study blogger economics in order to get ahead, or even keep up (btw, that's a big assumption, because despite the success of TechCrunch, GigaOm, and other popular commercial blogs, the top line is not there for many others). One lesson for newspapers has got to be depressing: the overhead of running a commercial publishing enterprise has plummeted to a level where almost anyone can jump in. But note that Michael Arrington and others are spending on "headcount." By that, of course, he means writers, and that's not-so-bad news for journalists. The new publishing world continues to drive the demand for good content. Only question is, who's hiring?
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