Online Media Cultist

As the blogosphere starts to mature in bits and spurts, earning a full-time living as a “professional” blogger is a notion and dream for thousands.

A New York Times piece from the weekend looks at the growth of jobs stemming from the blogosphere. Interestingly and perhaps not surprisingly, blogging gigs tend to be much more lucrative – at least from the start – for paid positions from corporations who need bloggers rather than the advertising income one could hope to gain from blogging on one’s own.

This really highlights the power of blogging as a marketing and promotional tool, and shows that some companies see the benefit of paying full time employees to enter the blogospheric conversation.

Robert Scoble is quoted in the NYT piece, noting that just being a “blogger” is not enough; you have to bring some other qualities or expertise to the table. While I’m not a professional nor full-time blogger, I can relate to this. It’s part of the reason why I shed writing about politics and television, subjects I’m passionate about but do not have the time to cover as authoritatively as I’d like.

Tony Hung of Deep Jive Interests brings this conversation to a whole new level in thinking about what it would (and likely will) mean when bloggers in the third world can make full time livings through writing online full-time.

Tony mentions Philipino bloggers who can write “pound for pound” with their North American counterparts. I immediately thought of the huge and bright English-speaking population in India and the chapters focused on India in Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat.

In essence, bloggers will face the same competition from the “flat world” as many other industries. Which is all to the good: more writers making more money in more parts of the world can only help to facilitate better communication, better ideas, more innovation, and more cooperation throughout the world.

One of the many reasons I’m proud to be involved with Blogcritics is that it truly is a global community of “superior writer/bloggers.” The company is run by three dudes from three different US time zones who have met in person exactly once, has editors around the globe who help bang out edited pieces around the clock, and receives on-the-ground unique coverage and perspective from places like Israel, Northern Ireland, India, Pakistan, Germany, and on and on.

And speaking of India and Pakistan, Desicritics is a BC Network site and web community that focuses exclusively on that part of the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of our best Desicritics (of which there are many!) are making a full time living through blogging before too long!

I couldn’t sleep early this morning and wound up catching up on all manner of web geekery (you get extra points for web geekery on the weekend, I find, and triple if it’s before 8 am) when I was struck by something that Jason Calacanis said on CalacanisCast, with reference to Weblogs, Inc., the blog network that he founded:

We broke out when we went to a multi-brand strategy.

This is something that I think about a lot at Blogcritics (where I’m exec producer): how to take a highly (but not massively) successful online magazine of 1,800 writers and two million+ monthly page views (on pace to hit three million this month!) to the vaunted “next level.”

Now, I know that Jason’s (correct) argument is that Weblogs grew to be massively successful because it hit the consumer channels – web gadgets, cars, gaming, gossip – where there was already demand online. To do this, Weblogs found talented writers and paid them to be stars within their sphere, and then paid for advertising to draw readers on the hope that they would stick around and spread the word themselves.

Blogcritics began slowly embarking on a “multi-brand strategy” of its own in 2006 with the launch of Desicritics, a “spin-off” of the Blogcritics model (lots of volunteer writers, a bunch of editors, and a massive content publishing system developed by our whiz of a Technical Director, Phillip Winn) that focuses on India and South Asia.

In 2007, the pace of this strategy has both quickened greatly and changed to some extent. If Blogcritics and Desicritics can be thought of as online magazines or group blogs (we prefer the former!), the new batch of sites are more like “sole proprietorships,” where we turn over the reins to a highly motivated and talented writer who is looking to focus on a niche area of content. The ideal people for such gigs are not only talented and savvy in their area of expertise, but they are also self-promoters and online entrepreneurs in their own right.

So as you might guess the tricky part is finding the right people to run BC network (that’s what we call our blog network) sites. The great and tremendous advantage of being part of a strong grassroots online community that has been around for 4+ years is that our talent pool is rich and deep. Which is lucky too because unlike Weblogs, Blogcritics doesn’t have a budget to pay BC network publishers a salary – all the more reason for the need for self-motivated online entrepreneurs of the first rate!

Despite this challenge, the BC network is growing and has been a huge success thus far. Glosslip, helmed by Dawn Olsen, is a deliciously gossipy dream, bringing cutting sarcasm and real writing chops to the crowded but galactically enormous gossip space. BC Goodie Bag, run by the multi-talented Anna Creech, is a showcase of video clips and other fun schwag from around the Interwebs. And Josh Hathoway’s Confessions of a Fanboy (or COAF, as I like to call it) is a delightful and manic exploration of music and the mind of the music addict.

Then there’s little old Online Media Cultist, the latest BC network venture. While I’d love to have three million page views straight out of the gate (and wouldn’t we all?) I’m extremely pleased with how things are going thus far. The comments have been great, and I can’t tell you how much fun it is to chat about webby goings on.

The next phase of the BC network rollout is ambitious, with sites covering independent film, television, theater, comics, politics (a big announcement coming here down the road) and one or two others I can’t think of at the moment in the works.

So the challenge here is to reach multi-brand success without start-up capital (read = ability to pay writers or buy advertising). Because of the experience and expertise of the Blogcritics organization in the blog space and its pool of homegrown talent, I believe that the model is there to be not just highly but massively successful.

And whatever the case, it’s a hell of a fun ride!