While I love the medium, I've always been skeptical about the value of blogs as businesses.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Blogging can generate a great deal of traffic to your online business.
As a source of innovation, an engine of our economy, and a forum for our political discourse, the Internet can only work if it's a truly level playing field. Small businesses should have the same ability to reach customers as powerful corporations. A blogger should have the same ability to find an audience as a media conglomerate.
If folks focus in on a niche and own it, there is a good chance they could make half a living from blogging.
It's not easy for an entrepreneur to find the time to blog. But for those who do it, it is a great tool to communicate with the various stakeholders in their business and build a reputation for thought leadership.
I'm not sure blogs are necessarily the best place to get a pulse on anything. People want to blog for a variety of reasons, and that may or may not be representative.
If you take a print magazine with a million person circulation, and a blog with a devout readership of 1 million, for the purpose of selling anything that can be sold online, the blog is infinitely more powerful, because it's only a click away.
I think a lot of journal articles should really be blogs.
Blogs are the main exception I make in my aversion to complex machinery.
I had a blog for many years. Once you develop your readership on your blog, and you can put something out there or direct traffic or get attention - it's like a super power.
Do I think there's going to be a business in blogging? Yes.