We've been wondering when blogging -- rather than provide a form of procrastination -- will actually make anyone a living. Sure, Andrew Sullivan claims he made $27,000 last year from donations. Jim Romenesko gets paid by Poynter to produce his Media News weblog. Glenn Fleishman's site has become the central switch for news about Wi-Fi, and he's recently begun taking advertising. [Also see Meg Hourihan's article, linked below.]
But there are still few commercial weblog media products. Media products. Notice how unwebloggy that sounded. Anyway, Pete Rojas and I thought we'd try a little commercial experiment. It's called Gizmodo, and it's a vertical blog devoted to superskinny laptops, spy cameras, wireless wizardry, and all manner of other toys for overgrown boys. All gadgets, all the time.
The site is designed by Mena Trott of Movable Type, and is edited by Pete Rojas, who also writes for Red Herring, Wired and the Guardian. Pete is, after Jim Romenesko, one of the first paid bloggers. Imagine, getting paid to blog: everybody's dream job until they realize they *have* to post six times a day, and can no longer just head off to the beach at a moment's notice.
I have no idea how much Gizmodo can bring in revenues. All I know is that weblogs are a compelling form, gadget addicts are all online, and Amazon.com's API makes it easy to connect product with content.
Most importantly, this is a low-risk commercial experiment. Most media companies suffer from overblown editorial, an ad sales force with padded expense accounts, and overly complex publishing systems with a team of primadonna sysadmins to maintain it. By contrast, Gizmodo will be a couple of hours a day of Pete's link-picking skills, some automatically generated Amazon.com links, and $150-worth of Movable Type. Media has never before been this lean.
Gizmodo is still a work in progress. So, please, your comments and suggestions, on user interface and editorial style, as well as tips on cool new gadgets. Send Peter Rojas email at peter@gizmodo.com. We're also looking at a couple of other vertical commercial blog ideas. I can't think of any other sector that works as well as gadgets. Porn is the only other vertical that seems to make sense. But I'm open to more salubrious ideas. Email me. ·Gizmodo -- the gadgets weblog ·Blogging for Dollars [Meg Hourihan]
