The Syntagma network magazine has a great article on the business of blog networking, based on the insights of Gerry Reynolds, a “business consultant specializing in the retail sector”.

Several salient points:

The online content business is a small margin trade — unless you’re prepared to invest heavily ($20m). By that he means that there are few big payouts for individual sales — i.e. of ad space. Big bucks have to be accumulated over time from small sum payments…

Rarely will one site make a living salary for its owner. It does happen, of course, usually for quirky, semi-commercial blogs which catch on for reasons known only to visitors, or sites using below the radar techniques for hoovering up Adsense clicks…

The need, like corner shops, to work with low margins through quantity, while not compromising on quality. A hard call, and only for the determined.