Blogging for Cash? Daniel Lyons’ mistake

Posted by Tom Blue on February 9, 2009 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

Daniel Lyons just wrote a post called Time to hang up the Pajamas that discusses how he has decided to retire from blogging. Daniel is the guy who created the anonymous “Fake Steve Jobs” blog who seemed to post comments on multiple blogs and who was later outed by a NYT reporter, Brad Stone. Lyons’ blog, at its peak was getting 1.5M visitors a month, but was only able to turn that into $1040 of Adwords revenue. I am sure that he could have monetized the site much better, but I believe he is missing the point.

Blogging is not necessarily about making ad revenues. It is about making a name for yourself, your company, and/or products. I, for one, did not build this blog to generate any ad dollars. It is to create awareness of myself and the companies/products that I have. I have a couple of different websites that I run and more are on the way. This is a vehicle for people(and maybe the Press) to find out more about them. Secondly, I would also like more people to know about myself. Bloggers connect with other bloggers online and this turns your blog into a networking vehicle.

You would think that Daniel Lyons would know the benefit of this. I went to his site and he was able to get a book deal on his “Fake Steve Jobs” experience. In addition, I had never heard of Daniel until he started his blog. As a writer, isn’t it important that your name is known?