I know what you are thinking, blogging for a lot of people is free. For others there’s a cost but that cost is pretty minimal. I agree, for the most part, the cost associated with running a blog is small. If you host your own blog, you pretty much have domain cost and hosting cost.

When it comes to domain cost, most pay on a per year basis. Even then the cost of a domain name is usually $10 a year or less. Hosting is really the only monthly bill associated with running a blog. Those can cost as low as about $6 bucks a month to over $30 bucks a month. The actual cost of running a blog is not really going to be effected by today’s economy, but the problem lies with the money people look to make by running their blogs.

There are several different ways people make money blogging

Adsense or something similar

Amazon or something similar

Paid reviews or blog post.

All advertising based. Lets take each one and look at how the economy could impact that method of making money.

Adsense

This is probably the method of making money that will get hit last. The reason why, advertisers of all shapes and forms use adsense to advertise. While cut backs and a down economy may cause companies to spend less there is plenty of advertisers in that pool to keep things running. Another thing about Adsense style programs is the fact that its based on clicks, not purchases. As long as people are browsing the web, those clicks are going to happen. I’m not going to say that Adsense revenue will never drop, because if things stay bad for a long time, you will start to see it drop. But the way adsense work right now, it will be a while before things get to that point.

Amazon (or similar programs)

This type of advertising will probably be the one that people will start to “feel” first. If you arent familiar with the type of advertising Im talking about. Ads that bloggers get a commission for purchases made due to clicks on the blog. You talk block about a clock radio and link to that clock radio’s listing in amazon. a Reader click the link and purchase that clock radio, the blogger makes a few cents.

This is real obvious and we are already seeing this happen. People are cutting back on their spending. They may click on those amazon ads, but they just aren’t as quick to buy as they were about a year ago. If you are one of the lucky bloggers that make any money using this form of advertising (Im not one of those). You are probably already seeing slowdown. The longer the economy stay bad, the worse this is going to get.

Sponsored reviews or paid blog content.

This form of advertising I think will see changes is a different way. Here you get paid a set amount for a blog post or review. Like adsense, its a market that all manner of online business use. but unlike Adsense, those fee’s for writing such content will start to drop. Another thing that can happen is as companies start to cut back to save money, I can see this form of advertising being one of the first on the list to be dropped or lowered. The amount of advertising here will stay there for a while, but the quality choices will start to dwindle. In turn, bloggers that are looking to make that extra money because the bloggers themselves are also needing to make ends meet, will lower their standards on what they choose to accept as a paid offer. The better offers will get even more picky than they were before because they would be looking to maximize the effectiveness of the blog post they are paying people to write.

Hopefully, things will start to turn around here soon. If not, things are going to start to get a little tough for bloggers trying to make a few bucks