The Business Of Blogs

Is it possible to make blogs into a full fledged business? Could they really replace newspapers as a whole? Folio has a brief article on the work of Andrew Sullivan. Named as one of Folio‘s top 40 industry influencers and innovators for his work with The Atlantic.

Brought on to help TheAtlantic.com become a prominent force in the news blogging community, Sullivan assisted in the site’s growth from 522,066 uniques and 1.4 million page views in January 2007 to 2.5 million uniques and 13 million page views in January of 2009. What did it take to drum up all this traffic?

In the hay day of the elections, Sullivan personally posted 400 to 500 blogs per week. It paid off too. In September and October, TheAtlantic.com generated more than 8.8 million uniques and 68 million page views.

Of course Sullivan doesn’t work alone. The Atlantic‘s blog also boasts blogging big wigs Jeffrey Goldberg and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Sullivan himself is still on a 300-400 post per week schedule though. This is in addition to reports he writes for The Atlantic magazine and a new project he is undertaking that looks at how the conservative party in England came back into prominence and current U.S. Republicans might learn from them.

So, still think you have what it takes to make blogging into your full time business?

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