You nailed the problem. It's absolutely possible, even easy, to break even with a blog when the revenue has to pay a salary or two. Much less so when you expect the blog or online magazine to pay for a whole staff of professionals. I don't remember who, but someone popular blogged about this very issue. (A Smart Bear? DHH?)
Anyone know of links to articles? I know it can be done, and I am thinking more for a comic than blog, but I just need about $3k/mo. I keep getting told I am delusional, that it can't be done. The evidence seems to be it can be done, I'm just not sure how.
Don't fall in the "this makes money trap". Many niches can make you money, and you'll probably make more money with niches you have more experience with. You just need persistence.
One year (and a half) earlier, I was making almost nothing (per month) from the Internet. I was looking here and there for ways to make money, tried almost everything; and made nothing.
Then I decide to stick to one thing: Create and sell scripts (http://codecanyon.net). They give you 50% and script prices are between $5 and $15 (too low). But there were a few making money with it (cool money), so why can't I?
First months, it sucked. I was working hard to release my first and second products. I discovered that it was hard to build something. I made little money ($5-$30/month).
Only this month (1 year and a half later) that things started to move. I'm about to cash $500 even I'm not optimizing my landing pages, improving my rankings, doing some promotion... [It's good to mention that I made around $1500 doing custom development related to my scripts]
And now I'm a whole lot more optimistic: I believe I can make $2k-$3k from CodeCanyon alone, and I'll be doing it in the next couple of months (and not next year). I'll write about my experience, and how I made it once I setup my blog.
But back to the original point: Persistence. Stick to your plan.
Thanks. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it and I feel pretty confident that I know the niche I need to pursue and that it can and does make money for some people. Still, well-meaning folks sometimes try to discourage me and tell me "it's not a real business" and stuff like that. Actual figures are helpful. I do still have a day job, so I don't have to be some overnight success or something.
I routinely make $3K/mo from my technical blogs, and I post infrequently, dedicating a couple of hours a week to them. I'm writing a book to teach people how to do the same (http://technicalblogging.com). I'm not saying that making $3K from blogging is easy, but it can definitely be done if you are serious about it. And if we are in the realm of full time writing done by a professional journalist (as per the original article) it's not that hard. You just need a solid idea, plan, and execution.
Did you have preexisting contacts who were able to send affiliate offers and sponsorships in your direction, or did you have to build up your reputation from scratch when you started blogging?
If the latter, how did you do this? What mediums did you primarmily rely on (email, Facebook, Twitter) and how long did it take for you to hit pay dirt? I can imagine it's not easy getting the attention of good sponsors.
Was it one of those things were you were holding for a lucky break, or did you have a gradual buildup to success?
From all I know about blogging, "easy" is quite an exaggeration unless you live in rural China. Blogging is a hugely unreliable source of income unless you're a blackhat SEO. It's strictly possible to make a decent living, but the odds are worse than almost any other profession. Your chance of making $10 per month is vastly higher than your odds of making even $1000 per month.
I'm looking at doing a webcomic. There are webcomics that support themselves. I do not know of details on exactly how they do that. I have looked at some webcomics that support the author and they have ads, sell t-shirts, take donations, etc. I would still be interested in seeing any articles with harder info that anyone might happen to know of.
Zach Weiner of SMBC-Comics.com did an AMA on reddit and said that he makes a living off of, "Mostly ads, though t-shirts sales are a decent percentage as well" [1]. He lists the ad networks he uses in the AMA.
You could try asking him for more specifics; he seems pretty friendly and open.
The percentage breakdown varies, by comic. Something Positive was apparently making 35% of its income from ads [2]. Dominic Deegan's artist "makes most of his income selling self-published compilations of his webcomic at anime and comic conventions" [2]. I've also read of other artists—can't remember which, sorry—saying they make little through ads, and that most of their income came from merchandise sales.
