Americablog, a big Democratic political blog, just posted a plea for money saying “ad revenues have been down the last two months, a lot – last month we only took in 25% of what we made in December.”
A 75% decline in 2 months is a huge drop. Dozens of left-of-center blogs, including Americablog, use BlogAds for ad revenue. BlogAds is a great service, but they don’t have many ads. Thus, the same ads appear on multiple blogs many times a day. Sooner or later it’s a given that people will stop clicking on them. Maybe that’s what’s happening here. If Americablog is having a drop in ad income this severe, chances are other blogs are too.
Sue says, “blogs will be like eBay soon. Still there, but not hot and trendy.” Like eBay, some will be able to make a living doing it, but many who thought they’d be able to, won’t.
Update: 3/23. AmericaBlog confirms that other blogs also are having big drops in revenue.
Your other favorite blogs are probably in the same spot we are – ads have been down across the board the past few months. They’re busting their butts too. Please help them out.
[…] While reading Kos’ bio, I clicked through to their Sitemeter stats. DailyKos is down about 20% from their October peak. This dovetails with what AmericaBlog said a few days ago, that their ad revenue is precipitously down, and that this was across the board for progressive blogs. Something’s happening, that’s for sure. […]
[…] Squash details the decline in hits in the tech blogosphere as well as in the quality of posts. He could be talking about the political blogosphere too. As reported here, AmericaBlog reported a large drop in ad income from Dec. 2005-Feb 2006 while DailyKos show a steep decline in hits starting in October 2005. […]