Income from affiliate sales – books, t-shirts, posters, etc. – an compare with, or greatly exceed, advertising income, but varies greatly from site to site. If you have a web site about electronic circuits, you may be able to sell electronics kits, but if your site is about Iraq then you may have to settle for selling “most wanted” packs of cards (until you can bid for reconstruction contracts on ebay :-).

And don’t forget, it’s entirely possible that a blog can be negative to one’s career. Some people make a fortune in the stock market – and some lose their life’s savings.

The problem with the blog-as-personaladvertising argument is that it has to be viewed in the context of whether it’s a COSTEFFECTIVE method of advertising.

Topical blogs that need to be roughly the best-of-breed to succeed are going to have huge problems generating hits, and ad revenue, unless they are actually in that category.

As far as print media are concerned, the availability of free material, on any topic you care to name, of a higher quality than the op-ed pages of The Australian tends to limit my newspaper buying to Saturdays for the TV guide or occasionally weekdays for sitting in a café at lunch. Actual books are a different matter, but e-books will eventually oust them to a significant extent. If I had a decent e-book reader I think the classics out of copyright at the Gutenberg Project would look very, very attractive as a source of reading for the train home, which would at least put a dent in my other reading purchases.

Blogging may be a way for writers to get recognized in an incredibly saturated market. After all, books (some books) may be profitable, but it’s not as though anyone who wants to publish a book will find an interested and successful editor and publisher to back their project.

The author of the Anonymous Lawyer blog has a book contract, I’m assuming mostly thanks to the popularity of his blog. Who knows how long it would have taken Jeremy to find a publisher otherwise.

Bloggers may end up with writing opportunities that pay well thanks to their blogging even if the blogs themselves don’t bring in any money directly.

And then there’s the problem of convenience of payment. While services like Bitpass are promising, there’s still quite a bit of user resistence to overcome if any new regsitration is required of them, (and even if there isn’t,) and if your readers have a sizable blogroll and your site goes pay, they may delist you long before paying unless many of their other sites also go pay.

Profit and the net still fit together uneasily. While the anti capitalist battle of a decade ago is lost, the net does not make profits easy despite the success of some. For most it is fools gold driven by unrealistic assumption.

Indeed in a more conventional sense many failed to grasp that it’s tendency is a perfect market with easy entry to suppliers and increasingly perfect information to buyers. A very tough environment.

Calling it all “blogging” is another instance of the overused word leading to confusion. It’s like talking about “writing”. Being a “writer”, as in a writer of advertising copy, can be very profitable if in a hot industry and a good position. Being a “writer”, in terms of say a philosopher, not so much (with very rare popular exceptions). But both are doing “writing”!

I’m not surprised that most of the sites you visit are ad-free if they’re anything like this one. It’s pretty obvious that visitors to Engadget will click on ads for tech toys, but what could you possibly advertise here?

Personally, I hope for more and better localization of ads. No more showing me links to overseas sites where the postage to Australia costs more than the advertised product, say.

Remember that the endorsement of Judy Miller means something. This woman has undoubtedly earned more money in one year by lying to her readers and employer than any of us will earn in our lifetimes.

So she’s a role model.