Recently, there has been no escaping the mention of Blogs in the media. Blogging has emerged as a social phenomenon, which has impacted politics, business and communication. Blogging software has enabled people with limited knowledge of the Internet to publish their thoughts online and participate in a global conversation; while the Blogosphere has hyper-accelerated the spread of information.
Technorati, a Blog search engine is now tracking over 7.8 million Weblogs, and 937 million links, and reports that there are about 30,000 - 40,000 new Blogs created a day.
The majority of people who Blog do so as a hobby, using Blogs to publish their thoughts, feelings and viewpoints on whatever topics interest them. Blogging software also enables people to post pictures, music and more recently videos. For many people Blogs are used as online journals or diaries; other people use Blogs to communicate with their family and friends.
There are some Bloggers who strive to turn their Blogs into successful businesses. Although Blogging as a business is in its infancy, a number of Bloggers have managed to earn money; others have generated a significant amount of revenue. Some media analysts have called Blogs the “Next Internet Boom” and predict that in near future these micro-publishing sites will receive heavy investment.
This work will examine how Blogs have impacted business and communication, how some Blogs create revenue, how some companies are using Blogs, how Blogs greatly boost the spread of information, how Blogs add richness to the media landscape, how Blogs work in the Long Tail, how some companies are tracking the Blogosphere and what the future of Blogging may be.
I carried out quantitative research by twice sending out a survey via email to 750 Bloggers who are ranked by Technorati. A total 174 Bloggers filled out the survey.
Some significant findings include: 49% of survey participants use RSS readers to collect information for their Blogs, 85% allow commenting on their Blogs, 33% of the Blogs use Google AdSense for advertising, followed by 22% who use BlogAds.
Regarding revenue generated directly from Blogs in a 12 month period: 45% do not generate any revenue at all, 40% generate under $5,000 and 4% generated over $100,000.
Whether people generate revenue with their Blogs or use them as a hobby the one thing they all have in common is that they are part of the Blogosphere, or network of Blogs that gives people a voice and allows them to spread information at an unprecedented rate.