For two years I was obsessed with trying to turn a blog into a business. I posted 10 or 20 items a day to my site, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, rarely taking a break. I blogged from cabs, using my BlackBerry. I blogged in the middle of the night, having awakened with an idea. I rationalized this insane behavior by telling myself that at the end of this rainbow I would find a huge pot of gold. But reality kept interfering with this fantasy. My first epiphany occurred in August 2007, when The New York Times ran a story revealing my identity, which until then I'd kept secret. On that day 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. Eventually I shut down—not for financial reasons, but because Steve Jobs appeared to be in poor health. I walked away feeling burned out and weighing 20 pounds more than when I started. I also came away with a sneaking suspicion that while blogs can do many wonderful things, generating huge amounts of money isn't one of them.

Now others seem to be riding the same downward curve, with euphoria giving way to exhaustion. Michael Arrington, whose TechCrunch blog empire attracts 6 million readers each month, has gone on a monthlong hiatus after three years of nonstop blogging. His break was prompted, he says, by burnout and by the craziness of the blogosphere (he says he's been stalked, threatened and spat on) and not by the fact that he's been trying to sell his company for a year and hasn't been able to find a buyer who'll pay his price, which is rumored to be $100 million. Gawker Media, a leading network of blogs, recently laid off all but one of its writers for Valleywag, its tech blog, which has struggled for three years. In January Pajamas Media, a collective of right-wing political bloggers, shut down its ad network, which CEO Roger Simon says "was a money loser for three years."

In late 2005 a columnist who writes for the ABC News Web site predicted that by 2010 the blogosphere would create "a whole new group of major corporations and media stars" and that "billions of dollars will be made by those prescient enough to either get onboard or invest in these companies." (He was responding to an article I'd done that criticized some elements of the blogosphere.) This guy was right on the first part, sort of. But as for those billions? Last year the total spent on blog advertising in the United States was a mere $411 million, according to researcher eMarketer. That represents only a sliver of the $23.7 billion spent on U.S. Internet ads last year, which is itself only a fraction of the $276.8 billion spent on all forms of advertising in the U.S. By 2012 blog ad spending will reach $746 million, while overall online ad spending will hit $32 billion, eMarketer says. More money was spent on e-mail advertising last year than was spent on blog advertising—yet you don't see anyone touting e-mail as the next big billion-dollar media business. Technorati, a blog researcher, estimates that bloggers who run ads earn an average of $5,060 per year. Don't call the Ferrari dealer just yet.

Advertisers shy away from blogs because they're too unpredictable and because few blogs attract anything approaching a mass audience—and even those that do face so much competition that ad rates remain pitifully low. "A lot of expectations are coming down in terms of monetizing social media," says Paul Verna, an analyst with eMarketer. " People have not figured out a clear way to monetize some of these vehicles." The bad economy compounds the problem, Verna says, but the real issue is "the lack of a clear business model that can generate substantial revenues."

To be sure, some blogs are little goldmines. Gizmodo, a gadget blog run by Gawker Media, had record traffic last month, with 98 million page views, and is "fantastically profitable," Gawker CEO Nick Denton says. Dooce, a personal-diary blog run by a husband-and-wife team, does between $500,000 to $1 million a year, according to Federated Media, which sells ads for the site. Arrington says TechCrunch did $3 million in 2007 and even more in 2008. He says he could sell the company today, albeit for a lower price than it would have fetched a year ago.

Those success stories keep money pouring into the space. The Huffington Post raised $25 million just a few months ago. The Daily Beast, led by editor Tina Brown, raised money from Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp. for its launch last October. (Disclosure: Diller is a director of The Washington Post Company, which owns NEWSWEEK.) Then again, The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast aren't really blogs —they're media companies that happen to feature, among other things, the work of some bloggers. Some A-list bloggers have found that the best way to "monetize" their work is by returning to the much-maligned "mainstream media"—like political writer Andrew Sullivan, whose blog, The Daily Dish, now runs on The Atlantic Monthly Web site. Presumably Sullivan makes a decent living. But as for that vision of the guy in his pajamas making millions with a blog? Or that one about investors raking in billions by betting on that guy in the pajamas? Take it from someone who dreamed the dream: I wish it were true, but right now it's looking like yet another high-tech fairy tale.

在过去整整两年的时间内,我一直受到一个念头的驱使,要将自己的博客当成一门生意。在名为“史蒂夫・乔布斯”的个人日记中,我每天要放上10到20种物品,鲜有停顿。利用自己的蓝莓手机,我可以在驾驶室写博客。每当梦中被一个新奇的点子所惊醒,我就会在半夜起来爬格子。通过不断的自我激励,告诉自己会在彩虹的尽头,发现一座巨大的金矿,我替自己这种疯狂的行为似乎找到了一个合理的解释。而梦境总是被现实无情地打破。我的首个幸运日出现在2007年8月,纽约时报的一篇报道透露了我的的身份,而在此之前,我一直刻意加以隐瞒。当天就有超过50万人涌进了我的个人网站,是迄今为止人数最多的一次,受益于谷歌的AdSense计划,我挣到了大约100美元。在那整整一个月时间里,我个人网站的访客数达到了150万人,于是我狠狠地赚了一笔,总数居然有1,039.81美元。之后不久,我谈成了一笔广告,让自己能挣得更多。但我从没挣到足够的钱,来辞掉白天的差事。最终,我还是关闭了该博客,并非出于经济上的原因,而是由于史蒂夫・乔布斯的个人健康状况出现了问题。我身心疲惫地离去,与当初相比,体重足足重了20磅。对此我也有一点深藏于心的小小疑问:博客可以用来做许多有益的事,但想要赚大钱显然不在其列。

现在,其他人似乎正重蹈覆辙,在干赔本赚吆喝的傻事。迈克尔・阿灵顿,他所开创的Tech Cruch 博客帝国每月能吸引多达六百万读者,在经过三年从不间断写博客之后,出现了长达一个月的间歇。据他说,在此期间他因歇笔而饱受困扰,个中缘由既包括自己身心疲惫,也包括来自于博客世界的狂热(据他称,自己曾受到他人的跟踪、威胁与恶言相向),只有一件事除外:他想将自己的公司卖掉,而在长达一年时间里,都未能找到一位买家愿意出到他的要价,谣传为一百万美元。Gawker Media,博客中一家名列前矛的网络,近来,除了为其科技博客Valleywag网站保留一名作家之外,其余人均遭到了遣散的命运,而该博客已苦苦支撑了三年。一月,Pajamas Media这家由右翼写手组成的博客群,关闭了其广告网络,而正如其 CEO 罗格・西蒙所言,“亏了整整三年”。

2005年下半年,据美国广播公司新闻网站的一位撰稿人预测, 2010年前,博客将创造出“众多全新的优质公司与媒体明星”,而且,“数十亿美元将被这些先行者创造出来,并足以使它们成功上市或为它们注入所需的资金”。(当时,他是在回答我写的一篇文章,并对博客中的某些要素进行评论时说这番话的。)他的话前半部分基本言之有理,但那数十亿美元踪影何在?去年,投在美国国内博客广告上的所有费用,不过区区411万美元而已。

据eMarkter的研究人员分析,这意味着与去年美国互联网广告费237亿美元相比,上述金额无异于九牛一毛,而后者在美国整个广告费2768亿美元中所占的份额也极其有限。eMarketer 预计在2012年前,投入博客的广告费将达到7亿4千6百万美元,同期在线广告投入总额预计将突破320亿美元。去年,投在电子邮件上的广告比投在博客上的要多,即便如此,也没有人会将电子邮件看作是下一个能赚大钱媒体经济。Technorati,一位专门从事博客研究的人士,估计博客版主每年平均能从广告运营收入中挣到5,060美元,尚不足以从汽车经销商手中买下一辆法拉利。

广告商对博客敬而远之,原因在于其收益有限,且只有为数不多的博客能吸引到足够的人气,即使是这类博客,也不得不面对激烈的竞争,其广告的收益率常惨不忍睹。“许多人降低了对通过大众媒体来获取收益的预期”,保罗・弗尔纳这位eMarketer的分析师这样说道“人们尚未找到从某些传媒中生财的有效方法”,弗尔纳还表示,低迷的经济让这一切变得更为复杂,但“缺乏明确的商业模式,将会催生出源源不断的收益。

不可否认,某些博客酷似小型金矿。Gizmodo,一个由Gawker Media运营的小巧网站,上月获得了高达9800访客的惊人纪录,堪称“日进斗金”。据Gawker 的CEO尼克・丹顿称,Dooce这个由夫妻档经营的个人日记类博客,每年的收益在50万到1百万之间,这是专为这个网站代理广告的 Federated Media公司所提供的数据。据阿灵顿称,TechCrunch的广告卖了3百万美元,预计2008还会更多。他表示自己目前考虑出售这家公司,并愿意接受一个比一年前低的报价。

这些成功的故事,让钱不断地流入这个地方。就在几个月前,Huffingto Post拿出了2500万美元。由蒂拿・布朗领导的Daily Beast,也从巴里・迪勒创办的InterActiveCorp(互动公司 简称IAC)获得了资助,来充作其十月份的启动资金(揭秘:迪勒是华盛顿邮政公司的一名董事,该公司拥有大名鼎鼎的新闻周刊)。Huffingto Post和Daily Beast 其实都算不上是真正的博客,它们的媒体分公司碰巧专业对路,而剩下的事,就留给那些博主去完成。某些排名靠前的博主发现:通过自己的劳动来“获得收益”的最好方法,莫过于重新走回“主流媒体”那种笔调尖酸刻薄的老路,比如政论作家安德鲁・沙利文,他的博客名为The Daily Dish(家常菜),设在大西洋月刊的网站上。不食人间烟火的沙利文生活过得惬意无比。但谁又能想像某个家伙穿着睡衣,写写博客,就能轻松挣到成百上千万美元呢?或者想像某位投资家搜罗数十亿美元,将赌注押在这个穿睡衣的家伙身上?奉劝做这种美梦的人快快醒来吧!我倒希望它是真实的,可如今它听起来活象又一个虚幻的高科技童话。