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Lawyer blogs make money from advertising? Sony is paying $25,000 per month

Veteran blogger, Jeremy C. Wright, wrote today that opportunities for generating significant blog advertising and sponsorship money may be upon us. Sure was born out by Sony paying $25,000 per month to be the exclusive sponsor of lifehacker, a gadget review blog.

Jeremy explains until now there has been BlogAds and Google AdSense which place contextually relevant ads onto pages. But over the last year, he says “…[A]d companies realized that bloggers hold a captive audience, and that their attention is worth money. Any way that advertisers could get blog readers to pay attention to their product in association with a blogger would be worth big bucks.”

Jeremy says blog sponsorships are the ultimate for advertisers: they get to associate their product with the blogger himself. Though out of reach for lawyers publishing blogs, Jeremy believes figures of 10-50K/month will soon be fairly standard for blogs which define the industry they work within. Proportionately smaller payments will be made for proportionately smaller influence.

Do law firms try to find a sponsor for their blogs? No. Stick to showcasing the intellectual property of the lawyers in your firm through your blog. You'll bring in more money by growing the law firm's business than in sponsorships. Plus, do we really see the day where we have Sony's Sidley & Austin.

  • http://www.generalcounsel.net/wiredgc/ John

    I agree; when I see a lawyer's blog with ads it gives me a sense that they are unable to pay the $20/month for hosting and related costs.
    I also checked out the website that Sony is sponsoring. While it has to be hard for anyone to turn away $25,000/mo, I wonder what it will do long-term to the credibility of the blog. If a new Sony product comes out that lifehacker thinks is awful, does the review get posted?