Dave Winer

It’s a simple counterargument framed in symbols and numbers: $3 million. That’s how much Winer claims to have made from his blog over the years, sans advertising.

While running a company, Winer used his blog to talk about what the company was doing. Net profit: $500k. Consulting gigs stemming from the blog: “a few hundred thousand.” Sale of weblogs.com to Verisign after only mentioning it on his blog: $2.3 million.

“So we’re already over $3 million — and all I did was what any blogger does — talk about what I’m doing. And that’s the role of a blog, it’s a way of communicating what you’re doing. Companies, consultants and authors need to do a lot of communicating, and blogs allow you to go direct, and be more efficient, less diluted. People get a real feel for who you are and how you think and what you’re like as a person.”

Then again, Winer did sort of invent RSS, among other things. That might have helped.

Regardless of whether one has enough geek cred to profit from his or her blog (or owns a fortunate domain name), Winer makes a great point about how a blog can make a person money without AdSense. Your blog is how you communicate about your business, product, service, or art, to the world. The only requirements are that you be interesting, passionate, and committed.
 

Those heralded A-listers we all looked to over the past few years? Many of them are hanging it up. Mike Arrington: handed over the TechCrunch reins to hired staff. Jason Calacanis: moved to email. Their chief complaints: fame. Too many haters, too much spit in the face.

Dan Lyons

This week’s quitter is Dan Lyons, the Newsweek writer who rocketed to blogsopheric recognition because of his satirical blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, now soured on "another high-tech fairy tale." His reason: there’s no money in blogging. The day the New York Times blew his Fake Steve Jobs cover, Lyons says, “more than 500,000 people hit my site—by far the biggest day I’d ever had—and through Google’s AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks. Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81. Soon after this I struck an advertising deal that paid better wages. But I never made enough to quit my day job.”

Every tech blogger’s Silicon Valley heyday nemesis—which has reduced staff to exactly one blogger—Valleywag was quick to note Lyons scored a book deal out of his little experiment with popular anonymity. And it was well deserved. The Fake Steve Jobs idea was a well-played stroke of genius.

This crop of A-listers aren’t the first to have blog-related meltdowns. They may be, though, the first to really go and stay gone. Self-proclaimed original blogger Dave Winer is known for periodic threats to stop blogging. Yet, he still blogs. Robert Scoble, chief among the famous-for-blogging-and-I-wrote-the-book-on-blogging elite, is prone to emotional denouncements of the craft and self-imposed mental health hiatuses. Yet, he still blogs, though to a lesser degree.

Some people just can’t help it. They have to blog. Like it’s a sickness. Some are victims of their own success. Fame isn’t, by nature, for everyone, even if fifteen minutes has been edited down to five public-commentary-abusive ones. And still yet others are disillusioned victims of hype and zeitgeists.

This list of types could go on and on. There are as many reasons to blog, or not to blog, as there are people. One thing is for certain: we seem to be at a blogging crossroads. Sadly (but perhaps naturally), pivotal, transformational (and sometimes bloody) moments are often misconstrued as deadly ones. Blogging has reached a crucial moment in its evolution, one where competition for money, credibility, and attention has never been fiercer. The weak, those whose prime devotion is getting rich, getting famous, getting laid, or getting approval will be culled. In the end, as in the beginning, it’s about purity and (some type of) artistic integrity. 

When I was in the fifth grade I joined the basketball team along with 40 of my friends. I was a chubby ten year old counted among the first who would give up when faced with laps and suicide sprints and leg lifts, pushups, and sit-ups as the coaches sought to weed out the weak and uncommitted (and produce a more manageable basketball team). And, after a week, I nearly ran home to enjoy Grandma’s gravy and biscuits in my-body-doesn’t-hurt peace. My mother, though, reminded me of my commitment, and by the middle of the season—when the coach had become fed up with his starting fast little waifs—I earned my starting forward position and never felt better about myself.    

Blogging, I think, is at a similar moment in its development, a moment all writers (and other content producers) must struggle through until they form a key component of their wills that says never give up.

I find it interesting that as soon as negativity about the economy set in, especially among those tech bloggers who thrive on bubbles and print journalists suddenly out of a decent-paying job who are forced to turn to blogging or dry cleaning, the negativity surrounding blogging also set in. Not enough money. Too many haters. A waste of time and energy. All hype no delivery. A cause of undue stress, obesity, and myocardial infarction. These were the same people, back when that bubble was still good and cozy, once so jazzed about The Secret, this century’s remake of Norman Vincent Peele’s The Power of Positive Thinking.

True, the average blogger pulls in a mere $5,000-$6,000 per year, and that average is obscenely skewed by the top one percent of bloggers pulling more than $200,000. True, there are more abandoned blogs than active ones. True, content in a world that values cheap, short, and easy has been reduced to embarrassing values (I saw one ad on craigslist offering $1.50 per “article”). True, there is worldwide competition for diffused and dwindling ad dollars. True, there has been a deluge of marketers, spammers, and professional bloggers (a.k.a. writers) and “mainstream” media types pushing out the wild and wooly (and unreliable and piggybacking and libelous) amateur, citizen journalists. True, viewers, readers, and fans can be nasty.

Welcome to the media business.

The good stuff lasts, the chaff separates from the wheat, the cream rises to the top, all that. The earliest bloggers and the self-sustained content producers may not like the idea that the blogosphere is changing and will require an old law of media: Content is king, but the king answers to his god, the network.

Save for a few shining stars (think, using radio as an example, Howard Stern an Rush Limbaugh and their hundreds of millions) and stellar independent publications, the network is what will save the blogosphere and content producers. It’s always been tough for individuals to make it in media without a network behind them, paying them good (even great) wages to produce, while the network aggregates and sells content and collective audiences to advertisers.

Like it or not, the corporation is going to have to enter the blogosphere, and by irony, will ruin it in order to save it. Luckily, unlike the past, there will be wider avenues via user-generated media for quality content producers, so long as they have the passion and will to walk those avenues. Besides, writers write, bloggers blog, regardless.
 

“It’s true I’m banned,” Lyons said via email.

CNBC denied banning Lyons, and laid blame on an assistant producer, who, reflecting the anger of other CNBC producers, said Lyons would never be on CNBC again.

When told about CNBC’s denial, Lyons responded, “If they say I’m not banned, great.”

The rest is a lot more he-said, she-said, but the bigger issue is similar to the one that plagued the Bush Administration as Congress grandstanded about faulty intelligence: Who knew what and when?

Dan Lyons
realdanlyons.com

Other questions: If it weren’t for bloggers and the Apple faithful continually expressing their skepticism about Jobs’ health, would the news have ever come out? Could this have happened in the blogless world of 20 years ago? 

Lyons, earliest and chief among the skeptics, credits the blogosphere. “Blogs kept this story alive and wouldn’t let it die. Mainstream media for the most part were acting as Apple’s lapdogs (eg, Goldman at CNBC) and not only refusing to report the story but actually covering up when bloggers did report the story and get nuggets of truth.

“In other words, CNBC and its ilk were acting as extension of Apple’s PR operation, helping Apple kill a story that Apple didn’t want out. I’d lump in that category the guys at New York Times who got played by Apple PR too—[John] Markoff who wrote about Jobs having surgery earlier this year, based on ‘sources’ (read: [Apple Communications VP] Katie Cotton) and positioned the story that Jobs was fine, he’d just had some surgery, but he wasn’t seriously ill. Ditto for Joe Nocera of the Times who did his ‘off record’ convo with Jobs and then reported that Jobs was fine. They got played. They helped Apple kill a story instead of actually reporting the story.”

That’s a bit more specific than Lyons got back in July on his blog, but he made it clear then he felt Apple was bluffing. That gives him at least six months worth of I-told-you-so’s to dole out to his counterparts in the media, which he has been unleashing with significant (public) fervor.

Steve Jobs
Apple CEO

Goldman denied covering up anything on Apple’s behalf and said he reported only what he had solid evidence for. The root of the scuffle between Lyons and Goldman is Goldman’s proclamation that Jobs was in good health and his subsequent mocking of Gizmodo, a popular gadget blog, just two weeks ago. While live-blogging at Macworld week later, Goldman again went after speculation and cautioned investors to “tread lightly when considering speculation from a doctor not directly connected Jobs’ treatment.” Said doctor was quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

Yesterday, Goldman blogged that he stood by his reporting because he relied on a source he’d “known for years” who assured him Jobs was fine. “All this company had to do was be upfront with everyone from the beginning,” he wrote. “Not telling us what we all wanted to know. But what we needed to know. Apple could have broken new ground on this front, ignited a new realm of transparency. Instead, it chose a different path. And shareholders, fans, and the Apple community are paying the price."

On the air, Lyons told Goldman he should apologize to his viewers “for having gotten it so wrong.”

Apple, Cotton, and Markoff did not return requests for comment. Nocera and Goldman could not be reached.
 

Fake Steve Jobs: Have You Heard Of oPtion$?

By hanging out with Nippon worshipper and fellow tech titan Larry Ellison, spooning with Sting, cruising with Bono, and firing people, of course. It’s all part of a day’s work in the three act play that is Options, the novel by Fake Steve’s alter ego, Forbes senior editor Dan Lyons.

The novel stems from the exploding popularity of Fake Steve’s blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Once an under the radar blog churning away in relative silence, it began attracting a higher profile audience, thanks to the ersatz CEO’s witticisms and scathing observations of the tech industry at large.

The real Steve Jobs, as well as Bill Gates (affectionately known as ‘Beastmaster Bill’ on the FSJ blog), both count among its readership. After interest in the blog hit a high note, Options began taking form, but not before New York Times reporter Brad Stone outed its anonymous author.

Throughout the fun 248-page romp, in which the more tech-inclined should recognize the real people behind some of the fake names, FSJ throws tantrums, works his Zen mastery on slavering Apple fanboys, and ponders the deeper meaning of the iPhone’s inner workings.

But real life intrudes, as vicious investigators for the feds, and a traitor in Apple’s midst, seek to undo Apple’s, and Fake Steve’s, resurgence as a tech industry titan. Improperly backdated stock options and the celebrity status of Apple’s leader have the forces of government allied against him.

Can he outlast the probe, the betrayal, and a frightening loss of confidence, to get the iPhone to the Apple faithful? You think you know the answer to this, based on real world events, but until you’ve read every word you really don’t.

As a bonus for our readers, we were able to secure some answers from FSJ about the book, himself, and people in his life. Enjoy this exclusive Q&A session with the legendary inventor of the friggin’ iPhone (and iPod) – have you heard of it?

1) The black turtlenecks you wear – humble article of well-made clothing, or a divine right conveyed upon you by the higher power that inspires gadgets like the iPod and the iPhone?

The former. I view my outfit as a form of monk’s robes. The idea is to abolish vanity and express my humility so that I can focus completely on my art. All I want to do is create beautiful objects. That is the only thing I want to think about. Not trivial things like clothing.

2) Which situation would you rather see happen to former US Attorney Kevin V. Ryan: a slow devouring by an endless supply of fire ants, or being subjected to hours of video of Woz and Kathy Griffin in flagrante delicto?

The former. I’ve seen the Woz videos and I swear to you, nobody deserves to see that, not even Kevin Ryan.

3) Hypothetical solution: Richard M. Stallman is drowning. What do you throw to him, and does it matter if what you throw to him instills a childlike wonder in horrified onlookers?

I would throw him a 24-inch iMac. It won’t save him but at least he’ll get to see what a real computer looks like before he goes under.

4) In oPtion$, you noted your management style uses fear and tantrums to get results. How many interns need to be in tears before you reach a higher level of consciousness for the day?

Half a dozen is an average day for me. Anything less than that and I get so antsy that I start firing executives. That’s why we’ve got so many interns at Apple. Phil Schiller calls them cannon fodder. Or, actually, "cannon foddah," because he’s from Boston. Phil has more interns than anyone, purely for sacrificial purposes. He keeps them lined up outside his office like captives on the steps of the great temple of Tenochtitlan.

5) You coined the acronym, Siooma. Why hasn’t this been added to the Oxford English Dictionary yet?

Have you ever dealt with anyone in the book publishing business? One word: Slooooow. It will be there eventually. Give them time.