Blog for money?

[Mike]

I had an idea for a site. Lets suppose I offer a site where you register and be able to choose a specific blogging software (Movable Type, Wordpress, etc.) with a custom theme and some fancy doodad features. Great, right? Now what if I offered to pay you to blog?

What I would do is put an Adsense ad on the page and give you a split of the money made. You get hosting, software installation, custom themes, fancy doodads and a portion of the profit.

Think this is a viable business model? Would you be willing to sign up?

[sanddrag]

How much would I make. I don't really know why anyone would want to read my blog if I had one. And if I did this, why would I split the money instead of just putting in on my own hosting and getting all the money?

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Would the blogger's earnings be based on the clicks from his blog, or would they be a percentage of the total profit among all bloggers?
It sounds like it would work, provided you could get cheap enough hosting and a good domain.

[ida_noeman]

Hmmm... If you got enough bloggers (and viewers) then each blogger could make more money than if they were doing it on their own, I think. Give it a try!

[Jessica Boucher]

I vaguely remember reading an article about a company doing this - so instead of doing what I'm supposed to be doing tonight I'm probably going to be going nuts until I find that article

[Mike]

Originally Posted by Sanddrag

How much would I make. I don't really know why anyone would want to read my blog if I had one. And if I did this, why would I split the money instead of just putting in on my own hosting and getting all the money?

You would make a percentage of the money that you bought in. So if you have a high traffic blog and bring in a lot of money you will get a lot of money. You would do this because we (I) would offer software installation/maintenance, custom templates (so you don't have to create your own or use a pre-made one), hosting maintenance, supply the ads. So all you have to do is blog.

Originally Posted by Ogre

Would the blogger's earnings be based on the clicks from his blog, or would they be a percentage of the total profit among all bloggers?
It sounds like it would work, provided you could get cheap enough hosting and a good domain.

It'd be based on the clicks from the blogs.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback. I think I'm going to start working on this (on top of working at robotics and still having a website for FBLA due 9 days after ship), so I'll keep you updated.

[Madison]

I'd be very surprised if you made much money from AdSense on a blogging site. People visiting a blog are not really part of a buying cycle and thus, are unlikely to click on advertisements. For that reason, my company does not serve advertisements on Google's content match network. The click-through rate is atrocious.

[Rombus]

I wont ever have ads on by blog:
http://www.rombus.us

Manily because the only people who read it are my friends and i basically use it as a scratchpad of ideas and worklog storage space.

[akedomakona]

if any one cares, i wright a blog on philosophy, its url is http://lifesphilosophys.blogspot.com/
chek it out, and click on some of the ads to make me some money

[paulcd2000]

the only problem with the idea is that people need to actually want to see that blog. Otherwise, you're just using money to pay for the domain.What's the fun in that?