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The Blogging Industry and Its Revenue Models

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The blogging industry has a unique structure. Blogging software, such as TypePad, WordPress or Blogger (Google) typically does not generate its own revenue. WordPress is open-source but sells advertising and has private feature options for pay, TypePad is a paid subscription service, and Blogger is usually free but provides a platform for Google to sell advertising space via their AdSense software (Zibreg, 2009). Tumblr appears to rely on financing rather than income at the moment, not having a sophisticated revenue generation model. Thus, four major firms all have different revenue models. This creates a unique internal dynamic in the industry, where all players pursue bloggers to use their platforms but all seek to monetize this traffic in different ways.

The external environment of the blogging industry is generally positive. The industry is rapidly-growing, with all three major blogging platforms among the leading websites in the world by traffic volume. Blogspot.com (Blogger) is ranked #8 by Alexa, WordPress #18, Tumblr # 37, Blogger.com #44 and TypePad #250 (Alexa.com, 2012). With this strength has come a shift in the way that blogs are used. Today, the emphasis in the blogging industry is on corporate blogs that can attract eyeballs and gain hits for client websites (Singha, 2011). Corporations employ professional content writers to manage their blogs, whereas blogging in the beginning was a more organic, consumer-driven function (Ibid). This shift provides more

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