Notes on Blogging for Dollars
One of the sessions I attended at Bloggercon on Saturday was a very packed meeting on ways to make money with your blog. Jeff Jarvis led the group, running through a very long list of things that have been tried and a brainstorm list of things that might me. Here are a few snippets from my notebook.

By a show of hands, Cafe Press and the Amazon Associates program seem to be losers for bloggers. I think only one guy said he was making even $100 a month through Amazon -- compared with some bloggers who are already making more than $1,000 a month with other advertising. I was really surprised to hear people were making so little through Amazon considering their associate logos are on so many blogs. Must be a bevy of basically free advertising for them.

Someone mentioned that Netflix has an associate program as well -- but I was too late to get my hand up and point out that Netflix has a terrible non-disparagement clause in their contract that I think bloggers should band against and boycott.

During the session, Rick Bruner mentioned Iron Blogger, the tequila-fueled idea several of us launched at Megan McArdle's apartment more than a year ago. It may be an idea abandoned too soon. The idea was to pick a topic a week and let two bloggers face off with updates through the week. I think each side was going to have a tip jar and whomever had the most contributions at the end of the week was considered the winner. Somewhere around here I have pages of notes I scribbled down through a very bad hangover. If I can find them, I'll post the coherent bits.
- posted by Amy @ 4/18/2004 10:53:00 PM