
How I made over $2 million with this blog - raghus
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/02/11/howIMadeOver2MillionWithTh.html
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sounddust
In my opinion, he made over 2 million dollars because he owned the name
weblogs.com, which Verisign bought for 2.3 million.

I don't think it has anything to do with his weblog. It has to do with the
success of Blogger, and after that, blogging in general. If I had never
maintained a blog, but owned the name weblogs.com, I would be 2.3 million
dollars richer right now too. I seriously doubt that Verisign wanted
weblogs.com because of their pingback system, seeing that it was becoming less
and less relevant as Technorati and other similar sites grew.

But I do agree with his main point that his blog made money, and Dan Lyons is
wrong.

~~~
jerf
He did not simply "own the name weblogs.com". Weblogs.com was the first
service that could be pinged to say your weblog has been updated, which he
implemented first in his company's environment, then in PHP (IIRC). It then
showed a list of all updated weblogs. This worked pretty well before the
spammers showed up.

It wasn't just a name sell, it was a service sell.

(That may not sound like a very difficult service, but there were scaling
issues as time went on. And... at the time that it sold, $2 million wasn't
much money, either.)

~~~
sounddust
I already addressed your point in my original comment.

I believe that Verisign bought weblogs.com mainly because they wanted the
name, not because of the service. The site was already losing traffic and
becoming irrelevant when he sold it, due to the increasing number of much more
useful related services such as Technorati. In fact, if I'm not mistaken,
Technorati had a valuation of over 12 million dollars _one year_ before
Verisign bought weblogs.com for 2.3 million.

~~~
jerf
Yes, I admit I missed that last sentence.

However, I think your contention that they didn't want the service is wrong,
since they are still running it. Swing on over to <http://www.weblogs.com> and
see for yourself.

You may think it was a dumb decision on their part. (I do. Weblogs.com did its
thing back when the weblog world numbered in the hundreds or few thousands,
but even pre-Twitter it was pretty obviously increasingly worthless at the
time it was sold. Even if the tech side scaled, the social side did not.) But
clearly they did want it, and still do want it enough to continue running it.
(Though I wouldn't be surprised it gets shut down any day now...)

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yan
I made $2 million from a typewriter! All I had to do was use it to write a
best selling novel and pitch it to the right publisher!

While he might be correct by saying he made it "with this blog," that entirely
misses the point.

~~~
jerf
Since that _is_ his point, I daresay _you_ missed it.

"Blogs don't make money. But people with blogs can."

~~~
jrockway
He probably would have made as much money even if he didn't blog about
himself.

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jwesley
I wonder what Dan Lyons was thinking with his initial column. He's obviously a
smart guy. He knows the blog landed him a book deal, his new job at Newsweek,
and internet notoriety. He knows there is money to be made through and around
blogging, so I'm inclined to think it was an intentional publicity bait, which
is working amazingly well.

Otherwise, I am constantly amazed by how dense people are about the value of
internet traffic. Like just having a ton of visits is the only thing the
matters. Visitor intent is just as powerful a factor in the equation.

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alexandros
I call anecdotal evidence. Not everyone can have one of the first blogs on the
web and be in the top 100 most trafficked blogs. Also, attributing the success
of a startup on a blog is a bit of a stretch.

~~~
jwesley
Everyone CAN start a blog and use it to market their business. If that is the
only marketing channel, attributing the success of the business to it is not
that big of a stretch.

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tsally
Let's be clear: Anyone who has a domain name like weblogs.com to sell, even
with zero content, is going to make quite a bit of money. They are scarce
commodities, and that has nothing to do with blogging. I hardly see how it's
fair to include that in the total. If I registered movies.com years ago, and
had a blog about movies today, it would be a bit silly to attribute the
millions I would get from selling movies.com to my blog.

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josefresco
If you want to learn about a real blogger making actual money from his blog
(and not related software/consulting sales), head on over to JohnChow.com.

He turned a few front page Digg stories into a blogging success story and
clears a healthy 6 figures each year now.

~~~
jwesley
John Chow's blog is such a joke. It exists to scam newbies. Shouldn't you be
busy making money online?

~~~
josefresco
How does he scam newbies? By offering advice in how to make money with their
own blog/site? How is that different than the "do as we do" blog posts from 37
Signals?

Oh and I am, thanks.

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okeumeni
I have made Millions from this chair, wearing this hat. I sat on this chair
and a made million writing kickass applications.

what a streeeeeeetch!!

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voxio
So all you need to do is have two extremely valuable .com domains and your a
hit. Pretty sure this is something most people already knew.

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menloparkbum
Dave Winer has made over $2M with his shitty software and pointless blog? I'm
either inspired (if THAT guy can do it, so can I) or I want to kill myself.

Edit: oh wait, nevermind. he made the money because he owned weblogs.com and
sold it to Verisign.

