This Business of Blogging: Blogging & Web Publishing

Blogs Boost New York Magazine's Website Traffic

New York Magazine's website has developed daily news blogs in addition to magazine-related content and they've helped grow web traffic to a claimed "10.5 million monthly unique users for September". This is the site's highest traffic since its launch 13 years ago and advertising dollars are also up.

New York blogs include:

Vulture - Entertainment News

The Cut - Fashion

Daily Intel - New York News

Part of their success can be attributed to high volume posting with new content going up every 6 minutes between 8:30 am and around 7 pm with eight or nine different pieces added overnight.

Impressive!

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The Michael Jordan of Tech Blogging & Pals on the Future of Professional Blogging

Solo Bloggers vs. BlogCorps

In a surprisingly disappointing Roundtable convened by MG Siegler on the Future of Professional Blogging, a group of bloggers famous in the tech world answer the question:

"Is the future of professional blogging more built around successful teams or individuals? Why?"

The question locks the respondents into a false binary resulting in surprisingly dull answers by people who generally seem pretty smart. But that's the nature of binaries. They destroy the interesting complexity of life.

Which makes me wonder, how can one describe a blogger known primarily in the tech world as the Michael Jordan of blogging? Tech blogging, maybe. But Michael Jordan? A world class athlete known far beyond the realm of basketball? Such comparisons really speak to the insular nature of the tech blogging scene.

But it does raise another question:

If MG Siegler is the Michael Jordan of blogging, does that mean his move into the world of venture capital will be like Michael Jordan playing baseball?

In any case, check out the Roundtable for yourself. If you haven't grown weary of the insular world of tech blogging, you might find something in there that interests you.

Related Business of Blogging Coverage:
MC Siegler, Former TechCrunch Blogger, Explains the Tech Blogging Game

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MC Siegler, Former TechCrunch Blogger, Explains the Tech Blogging Game

Anil Dash on MC Siegler's Post

MC Siegler, who left TechCrunch to join Michael Arrington at CrunchFund, recently posted about the game of tech blogging, describing it as a numbers game focused on "pageviews, scoops, and Techmeme."

Oddly enough, one commenter I ran across labeled the post a "parody" of tech blogging but, if you pay attention to what tech bloggers have been saying (and complaining) about the business, you know that it's a pretty accurate look at tech blogging today.

Other writers would put it differently but for the top tech blogs making that money, it's a cutthroat race these days as it is in many other sectors of blogging as a business from hip hop blogging to gossip blogs.

Sadly, Siegler's approach to blogging is only satisfying for winners.

Happily, there are a lot of ways one can build and profit from blogging without it having to be a stats game.

Posted in Blogging & Web Publishing | Permalink