Getting rich in the new media


Blogger Colleen Caldwell has made over $7,000.00 pushing various products on her blog. Per example:

"Has anyone out there read a book called 'The Ultimate Gift'? I just heard that a movie is being made of the book (which sold 4 million copies)," she wrote in a recent post on her site, Simple Kind of Life.

The 30-year-old software analyst from Brooksville, Fla., went on to praise the inspirational message of the Fox Faith film, which opens today, about a trust fund baby who discovers the joy of giving. Caldwell noted that each member of the opening-weekend audience was being allowed to direct a dollar of the ticket price to a charity of the filmgoer's choice.

One thing Caldwell didn't mention: She was paid $12 to build buzz about the movie's opening and the charitable campaign — bringing her blogging-for-dollars take to more than $7,700.

When I read this I was enormously depressed. No one has ever offered me a dime to shill for a product. Heck, I'd push that film for $10.00 but no one even asked.

Just kidding, of course. It would take at least twice that much money to get me to compromise my principles.

But the fact that I haven't had any offers isn't what got me depressed. It's the limited opportunities for corruption that the world of blogging offers. At $12.00 a pop, it took Colleen about 641 posts to earn that $7,700.00. Is that the best I can hope for if I turn pro? That's a year's worth of posts.

Contrast that with the opportunities open in the old media. You can, for instance, sell yourself outright, by writing posts, (or "columns" as they're called) that are bought and paid for, like Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus (thanks to Center for Media and Democracy for the links). Unfortunately, that can cause some problems if and when you get caught. Still, the money's fairly good and if you're doing it from the right side of the spectrum, and you're smart about it, you might suffer no ill consequences if you're exposed.

But even that's chickenfeed compared to the opportunities to make money for giving speeches to groups about whom you write or report. Why you can pull down $50,000.00 for one speech, with no express quid pro quo (but plenty of wink winks). It would take Colleen over 4000 posts to pull down that much money.

It's hard work making money in the blog world. Of course I would never think of taking the money. Look at the sidebar: no ads. I simply refuse to run them. Though, there are times, as I sit at my incredibly great Mac computer, downloading pictures for my blog from my first rate, highly dependable Canon camera or scanning them from my equally super Canon scanner, and saving them to my hardworking, high capacity Seagate hard drive, which has never let me down, or printing drafts onto my Brother printer, which attached to my Linksys network with incredible ease, (all of which I highly recommend) that I envy folks like Coleen, Armstrong and Cokie. If only I weren't so principled.
Posted: Friday - March 09, 2007 at 08:10 PM          

©