JB Holston, writing for the Always-On Network, asks the important (well, important to me) question of whether bloggers (and web content-creators in general) can ever expect to be paid for their ouvres.
Holston points out that some better-known bloggers look for "micropayments"; or donations/tips (e.g. using PayPal), or link to Amazon wishlists. He calls this panhandling, since it is not a pay-for-content (subscription) model, but one based entirely on hope.
He also suggests (and here, in my experience, is where the real value for bloggers lies) that site traffic "can lead to more pings for the thing you do to get paid." In other words, blogging is a way of marketing yourself. Holston gives the example of Seth Godin, who uses his blog as a way of publicising his own speaking engagements. I would add that Godin's blog is a means of keeping the conversation with his audience open, as well as continually building up that audience.
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Further to the Salam Pax hype, and with a growing number of blogs devoted to the war in Iraq, I've added a list of "War Blog" links on the right hand side.
Most are individuals who claim first-hand experience of the war, but some (the last three or four) are news-type blogs.
As for what's wheat and what's chaff, I'll let you decide...
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