How do they make money - Jason Kottke

Jason Kottke sets out his objectives for his blog, which he started in 1998

This is a collection of my experiments in media, design, hypertext, photography, writing & programming. If that's too pretentious for you, this site is a bunch of stuff I've been noodling with for the past few years.

He is now a full time blogger, so his income needs to be reasonable from the site. SFGate reported in May 2004 that Kottke says his site, gets 12,000 to 15,000 visitors a day. And by February 2005 he is reporting 25,000 visitors a day

Prominently displayed on the site is a "Support kottke.org with a financial contribution" banner linking to a page giving full details of how to contribute using PenPal. As an incentive to donate:-

If you contribute $30 or more (that's $2.50/mo. over the next year), you'll be entered to win one of the following gifts donated by several generous individuals and companies. If you're the type of person who's impressed by numbers, the total cash value of the gifts is about $6200.

He appends a list of over 600 micro-patrons including Google and Disney Blogs

Wired News comments on the risks involved, versus the gain to be made, by not taking advertisers.

But eschewing advertisers is more of a risk. Kottke is avoiding them because, as a one-man operation, there's no easy way to neatly separate editorial and advertising.

"Advertising introduces a third party into the relationship between me and my readers," Kottke said. "I don't want to be doing things on my site that are geared more to advertisers than to readers."

He is a powerful feeder of other sites, for example is number 9 on the list that feed Waxy.org and number 18 on the Technorati list of most influential blogs. And there is a nice quote from David Galbraith

So Kottke has set up in an garret in Brooklyn to become the first full-time Blogger with Left-Bank style freedom - which is great news, good luck Jason.

“I’m attempting to revisit the idea of arts patronage in the context of the Internet,” said Mr. Kottke, who attracts about 25,000 visitors per day. He suggested $30 for the year, or about $2.50 per month. Mr. Kottke hopes to make one-third to one-half of his prior salary as a web designer, but declined to give numbers.

The conclusion would appear to be that Jason Kottke attracts 25,000 visitors a day, and has 600 patrons. If you assume, for no good reason, that they average $50 a head it gets him to an income of $30,000 a year. I suspect that it is more than that with a few large donations, but the lack of any advertising certainly cuts the potential for any large income.