Are Bloggers Their Own Worst Enemy?

In the little over six years that I've been blogging I have seen blog advertising networks wither up and go away.  So far there has been the beer widget, 125exchange, BlogRush, BlogExplosion, Spottt and there were likely others.  Now CMF Ads is folding effective October 30 but essentially it is finished now.  The common cause cited for the closing of these blog advertising networks is lack of support from bloggers.  So are bloggers their own worst enemy by not supporting blog advertising networks?  My answer is no, but let me explain.

Bloggers fall into two basic categories - those trying to make money with their blogs and those not trying to make money with their blogs.  Let's say it is an even split of 50:50 so 50% of bloggers are trying to make money with their blogs so a blog advertising network is beneficial in gaining them more traffic that should increase that income.  However, of those bloggers trying to make money, a good 50% of them use Adsense that clearly says you cannot use a traffic exchange.  That leaves a total of 25% of bloggers to support the blog advertising networks.  But some of those blog advertising networks charge actual money to advertise your blog something many bloggers cannot afford to do.  Essentially, the blog advertising networks are trying to stay in business with income from less than 10% of the bloggers in the blogosphere.  It does not take a lot of calculation to realize the economics of this.  Clearly less t 10% of the bloggers in the blogosphere cannot possibly support all the blog advertising networks so there are bound to be casulties.  

Garden Gnome
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