Am I The Only One?

[ReformedSmoker]

Am I the only one or does everyone skip over blogs that have anything to do with money making or finance?

They seem to me to be as bad as banners these days!

[Ferox]

Yes, I skip them too. There's nothing new or inovative in them, and they're boring. Somtimes I think the only people that read those blogs are the ones that write them- to check out the competition and to find something to write about. There's probably only one that I even tried to read regularly, but gave up on.

[The University Kid]

Seeing as I blog in that niche, I don't skip over them.

Different markets - your interest in MMO-type blogs may match mine towards mommy blogs or politic blogs. I'd say that most established MMO blogs reach their target market well, which is what they should be aiming to do - as good as it is for the traffic stats, having irrelevant readers does not mean much in the short nor long run

[ReformedSmoker]

Hey Kid, thanks for the reply. I hadn't thought that maybe the MMO readership are themselves MMO blog creators. I fully appreciate that it's "Horses for courses" where readership is concerned and my intent is in no way meant to "put down" MMO bloggers, my initial post was one of curiosity and I think you've expanded my view.

I'd still like to know how effective these blogs are and what overall financial return can be made from blogging/advertising.

Cheers,

[The University Kid]

Personally, I will not deny that MMO blogs suffer a worse reputation than other niches in the industry, and a lot of that is deserved - in the MMO niche, a large part of the big blogs is that people have to have "made it" online and thus newbies often feel that they have to lie/fake stats to succeed. You also have the odd scum only in it for the money and thus hyping up shitty products just so that they can get the affiliate commissions. However, those kind of blogs (thankfully) don't tend to last long.

As for the revenue possible... well, the sky is the limit. You have blogs like John Chow making $30k a month, and then you have the average blogger making $0. As with anything, you have to work at it - what I've found is that if you concentrate on providing your readers with something of value, the money will come soon enough

[ReformedSmoker]

30,000 per month, that's impressive. But then the title of the blog says it all really. I guess it's one of those areas where whoever shouts the loudest gets listened to. Thanks for taking the time there Kid.

[rhyswynne]

There are some useful and innovative ones, but a lot of them are just repetetive rubbish. They smack of corporate shilliness - even John Chow has gone a little weak recently - but the fact is there is money to be made with them, otherwise people wouldn't use them.

My general rule is that unless they've been written by people who have actually made money online, they're not really worth reading as they have nothing to offer me (it'd be like me writing on Reformed Smoker, I've never smoked in my life!).

[The University Kid]

What I've found is that there are two kinds of MMO blogs - the former, written by people who have been there, done that (JChow, UberAff, Zac Johnson etc) and the latter written by people documenting their attempts at making money online (Blogging Experiment, Caroline Middlebrook - heck, even TUK). I don't think any of them claim that they'll teach you how to make money though, although JChow certainly hints at it at times (but rarely follows through).

I prefer reading the latter category

[Strongbow]

It depends whether they grab my attention or not really i know what you mean though there is certainly no shortage of them.

[Alarcin]

The Credit Crunch may thin them out anyway !