Blog Money

Is there a way for a person who becomes skilled in Manila / Radio / Blogging / Frontier etc. to make some money using those skills?  That is the 64 million dollar question here.

Check out my Radio Doc Sources for a bunch of people who obviously have developed useful skills figuring out how to do things, in which you might be willing to pay them to help you out, so you do not have to sweat and struggle to figure out those same things.  We can talk on the phone (Al Macintyre is listed in the Evansville Indiana phone book - area code 812 ... I am at my current "day job" in the evenings of Tue-Fri and often home rest of time, but usually sleep in mid mornings), or you can click on the envelope icon at the left which sends me e-mail.

Add to that list of people eager to be paid for helping others:

• Roland Tanglao

Naysayers scoff at this concept: Does your Resume' boast any of the following skills?

• I can use a telephone.
• I can drive an automobile.
• I know how to program a VCR.

What company is going to hire you to get a decent salary because you claim some Internet Literacy skill? 

The more ambitious word smiths might check out what is available in Blog Books for Blog Software to see if you know the subject well enough to write a better book than what is out there right now.

Al opinion: There are multiple potential ways to make some money with Weblogging skills, but the windows of opportunity are moving targets, based on the evolving demographics of the total potential weblogging customer base and existing competition inside those Windows.  Some people are doing a real good job filling some needs, and it will be an uphill battle for any new contenders to get their e-feet in the e-doors.  While there are other areas where the existing service providers could stand a bit of competition.

• What is the potential growth market for weblogging customers?  You may as well ask, what is the market for new people wanting better e-mail services?  Anyone who communicates by e-mail is a potential weblogger.
• Think mom & pop tiny retail stores - pizza delivery, chinese food, book stores.  Would they pay someone to set them up with a weblog site, a tailor made Theme, and access to continuing tips how to operate it?  Could someone make a living making installations?  Could a high school student get a part time job as assistant webmaster? 
  • Could a grouip of students cater to the needs of several retail stores in their neighborhood?  Think of it as the same kind of income that an earlier generation got from cutting the grass, clearing snow off sidewalks, and washing cars.  Not a full time job, but a nice second income. 
  • These mom & pop places might like to have a connection to some place that cuts CDs that customers can take for free, that connect the customer PCs to the web site of the mom & pop place, to access web services relevant to whatever the store has to offer.
• There needs to be different kinds of documentation packaged for different audiences.
  • Most of my documentation is based on my own learning notes ... I struggling to figure some stuff out, and I write it up to help me remember, and hope that it also helps other people.  Those individuals who are several Radio learning classes ahead of me, and also better skilled in communications, can package documentation so that it reaches out to people who might lack the intermediate user's ability to find the documentation that previous students have created.
  • A CD Rom which has all the links to people who have so far done documentation.
  • This or that aspect for Dummies book series. 
• The marketplace needs clarity of the different weblogging software suites that are available from the perspective of suitability for different starting audiences.
  • Think in terms of user background in computer / Internet literacy and how much of their lives consumed by an interest in technology.  Some people won't want / need all the features at first, but may want to switch types of software later to get at a particular feature.
  • There needs to be documentation that compares suite content.
    • What is most beginner - friendly?
    • What has the shallowest learning curve?
    • Which is most feature rich ?
    • What has the best integrated documentation ?
    • Compare them based on pricing - reasonable for what you get.
    • How about ease of upgrading hosting options as desired?
    • Compare on Security / Recovery Quality.
    • Suppose I go with Vendor - X, can I later move my stuff to Vendor - Y with how much hassle?
      • For example MSN has a conversion package to move AOL favorite places to MSN's equivalent so an AOL customer not lose any e-mail addresses, archives, links etc. by switching.
  • This kind of comparison charting by itself will not make any money for anyone, other than salaries of journalists in the pay of some techy publications, but this is one thing needed to accelerate marketing of this technology.
    • See Blog Software MT and RU for my prior venture into thinking about this kind of angle.
• Chapter 11 of Blog On by Todd Stauffer (see Blog Books for more info about this and other books about Blog Software) is on using Weblogs in Organizations.  Now it strikes me that someone who is knowlegeable about a particular industry, and skilled with weblogging capabilities, might be able to combine those two areas of know-how to go and serve companies in that industry that might want to get started in weblogging.
• Charitable and Political organizations - front public page has news, calls to action, events.  Private (password required) internal affairs blog with discussion about platforms not yet ready to share with the public.
• Educators discuss ideas beyond the classroom, links to additional resources, class assignments, room changes, student discussion moderated by the teacher.  Use News Aggregation like dws.Radio.FAQ model in which each student is contributing a feed to a multi-author blog on a class project.  Teach them how to set this up.
• Restaurants and Bars with Live Entertainment display what bands are now playing, will be playing soon, and if there are any specials on the menu.
• Real Estate and Property Managers who are interested in their neighborhood might want to have like a little newsletter about what's happening that affects the neighbors.  Marketing type stuff would go in separate stories with links to them from the main page.
• Radio Userland must be making some money selling Radio, and they have 40-50 competitors out there with other types of Weblogging software.  Doubtless there will be more than 40-50 competitors in the future, and many of them will go under when the best versions win out. 
  • Becoming a competitor requires a lot more than Weblogging skills: heavy duty programming to get a package that has to be competitive with the market leaders, perhaps even better, priced lower, marketed better.
  • We don't know which of these competitors will be successful in the long run, but it seems evident that weblogging will be a growth industry.  So, is there a mutual fund we can invest in that buys stock in all of the different weblogging outfits, and perhaps makes venture capital available to the creators of plug in tools?
• Salon.com has a good deal.  Perhaps you can negotiate with Userland to do something similar, but you need to be linked up with a decent sized outfit in the first place, so you have something to offer.
• Alternatively you might negotiate with Userland to get them more customers with you getting some commission for each sale.
• Weblogger & other ISPs have hosting options.  Perhaps you can be an ISP competing with Salon & Weblogger.  The ISP market is extremely competitive.
• Perhaps you can create a plug-in tool whose users will ding your bank account every time they download your services.
  • Here is a common recurring scenario.
  • We do not backup as often as we should, then something goes haywire with our PC.  It might be repairable, we might end up with replacement hardware.  We need to reinstall some software, including Radio, and replace our PC Radio files with copy of what's on our public site.
    • Here is a future service solution to that scenario.
    • Victim of the above described scenario, with Radio application not running, visits solution service website & fills out form - who I am, my Userland account #, credit card info, etc.
    • Solution service website connects to:
      • Userland to validate victim id (we might not want this service used to copy someone else site in its entirety).
      • Public website of victim to measure volume of stuff that is there.
      • Check victim PC diagnosis to verify enough disk space available, and on basis of modem speed, how long will this take?
      • Credit card account to make sure all of it can be paid for.
    • Then victim is informed of the results to do a thumbs up / down on go for it, and also advised to print instructions what to do if connection gets broken before we done.
  • What would bloggers pay for this peace of mind?
  • Later versions could be used in moving between blog vendors (Moveable Type, Radio, etc.), categories and stories.
  • As I envisage it, once setup, end users work the interface while the tool creator collects profits and devotes time to improving the service and developing new tools.
• I personally am sick of the commercialization of the Internet.  Some sites bombard me with pop-up ads that mess up my PC bandwidth triggering a Microsoft Blue Screen of Death.  However, if you have talent that can be expressed on the Internet such that an army of enthusiasts beat a path to your e-door, perhaps some of them will be interested in buying some stuff in which your weblog is a portal with links in which the place that they link to pays you some small sum for each customer they get. 
  • The issue here is if it is even possible to contaminate weblogs with advertisements without the greed culture messing up the weblogs.
  • Check out the first Blog Award for 2002.  Wil Wheaton's site tells us what book he currently reading, with link to Amazon.com if you want to get a copy.  I do like his graphics.

Last update: 11/05/2002; 1:04:58 AM.