Blogging for dollars

Jay Brewer of Arlington built Blogpire, a lucrative "blog empire," out of a cup of coffee.

Three years ago, Brewer bought a Senseo coffee maker and posted a review of it at SingleServeCoffee.com -- a thriving niche website that led him to create 17 other income-generating product review sites, ranging from ShavingStuff.com to SuperCoolBaby.com.

Rhea Becker , on the other hand, dreams about going pro, but makes only a dollar or two a day from The Boomer Chronicles, a blog that mixes personal anecdotes from her Jamaica Plain neighborhood with advice for baby boomers.

As a few star bloggers have made six-figure salaries or million-dollar deals off blogs, more and more people have been tantalized by the prospect of making money online -- even though the vast majority of the blogs are little more than online diaries.

"A lot of the blogosphere does not make sense if viewed from the point of view of a business model," said David Weinberger , a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. "Blogs remain, I believe, primarily conversational."

Still, hope for cashing in on the blogs has spawned an industry of blog advertising middlemen -- companies that see big potential profit in connecting brands to bloggers.

The term weblog was coined in 1997, shortened to the word blog in 1999, and has been mainstream for at least five years, according to research firm PQ Media LLC. As the number of blogs has exploded to more than 57 million today, the blog ad marketplace has also surged -- from $100,000 in 2002, to an estimated $36.2 million in 2006, according to PQ Media. Blog advertising is expected to grow to $300.4 million in 2010.

Some companies, such as Blogads, Gawker Media, Federated Media Publishing, Pajamas Media, and Weblogs Inc. -- which was bought by AOL in 2005 -- have brought together or created popular blogs under a single umbrella, giving advertisers an opportunity to reach an audience that rivals or surpasses the audience at traditional media companies. Gawker, for example, reported more than 100 million page views in February at a family of blogs that includes everything from popular media and gossip site Gawker.com to gadget mecca Gizmodo.com.

Then there are high-profile bloggers. Jeremy Schoemaker , the writer behind Shoemoney.com, posted a photo of himself holding a check from Google AdSense for $132,994.97 in September 2005, and today says he makes more than $100,000 off his blog .

Darren Rowse, the writer behind problogger.net, writes a blog about how to make money online, and bought a house two years ago that he called "The House that Blogging Built" on his blog.

But the vast majority of blogs -- the great unread masses -- are intended for only a few eyeballs.

A Pew Internet & American Life Project survey last year found that about half of all bloggers believed their words were read mainly by people they knew. Fifty-two percent of the 233 people surveyed said they blogged mainly to express themselves creatively; 85 percent said they did not blog to make money.

The woman behind "Boston Gal's Open Wallet," for example, began posting intimate details about her financial assets and decisions online as a way of getting advice and focusing on financial goals. She admits to feeling a little freaked out now that her blog, which includes a detailed spreadsheet describing her personal finances, is viewed by people from around the world. She says the income from ads is enough to pay the utility bills for the fixer-upper house.

But she, like many other bloggers, says she has no desire to turn it into her full-time job.

Even so, there is a small industry of businesses that see full-time jobs for themselves in serving ads to a cottage industry of small-time bloggers. And as the media landscape fractures, that small but influential group of bloggers may become even more important.

A group of local bloggers last year started a Boston blog ad network that sells and posts relevant Boston ads on about a dozen influential local blogs.

The idea, said Adam Gaffin , blog master at Boston community news website UniversalHub.com, is that even though the individual blogs attract a fraction of what a major media organization might attract, the blogs reach a dedicated local audience. Individual bloggers with day jobs do not have time to go out and sell ads, and farm stands that offer pick-your-own-fruit and small event organizers often cannot afford to pay a hefty sum at a website that commands lots of Web traffic.

Tim Flight, the author of GPSReview.net, said he started out two years ago hoping to find an outlet for his passion for maps and gadgets. The Concord, N.H., resident began writing reviews of GPS devices in his house, and posting relevant gadget ads.

He used Marlborough-based Chitika to create "eMiniMalls " -- customized ads for the consumer products that he writes about.

Today, Flight says he makes about $50,000 a year from the blog -- a full-time career out of reviewing GPS devices.

Retailers like Amazon.com offer affiliate programs, allowing bloggers to create virtual store shelves on their pages, and AuctionAds.com, launched in March, gives bloggers an easy eBay widget that allows them to embed relevant product ads .

And recognizing the power that word of mouth advertising can have in an increasingly fractured media world filled with banner ads, PayPerPost.com became a broker between advertisers and bloggers last year, offering to pay bloggers to write about a product.

Still, Barry Parr, analyst at JupiterResearch calls the blog ad market "a rounding error" in the total advertising budgets.

"Like anything else, you've got a pretty steep curve," Parr said. "There are a small number of incredibly successful bloggers, and it drops off pretty quickly."

Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.