Getting rich by blogging is impossible?
So said Daniel Lyons in Newsweek in February 2009.
He wrote that he tried really hard for 2 years, and failed.
He’d posted up to 20 times a day to his site, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs without revealing his real identity.
In August 2007, when The New York Times revealed his identity, his site had 500,000 visitors, his most ever.
His Adsense earning that day was more than USD100.
A month after that, his site’s had 1.5 million visitors and he earned USD1,039.81.
A short time later he got an advertising contract that paid even better, but not enough to make him quit his day job.
When Steve Jobs’s got sick, Lyons stopped blogging.
He also gained almost 10kg due to all that hours spent sitting down and writing. So quitting blogging to him seemed to be a most effective diet pill.
Lyons mentioned other people who experienced basically the same thing, Michael Arrington, the founder of the popular blog TechCrunch.
That site had (still has?) 6 million readers every month, then Arrington took a 1-month break after 3 years blogging nonstop.
His reason? Burnout and “the craziness of the blogosphere”
Lyons also mentioned Gawker Media, whose tech blog Valleywag struggled for 3 years before getting rid of all but one contributor.
Also Pajamas Media, who in January 2009 killed its ad network which proved to be “a money loser for three years.”
