Like me, Anthony Eden wonders what Dave Winer's point is in his post about making money from blogging. I think Dave is talking about a completely different thing than most bloggers are when they ponder this.

Dave's Cluetrainist idea is a that companies which are transparent to their customers will be more competetive, at least as consumers come to expect it, so blogs will become a standard tool to achieve that transparency. I think he's right, to an extent, but the idea that CEO's and Congressfolks are going to personally blog throughout their day without a PR/legal screen is unlikely. The American legal and political systems can make the consequences of saying the wrong thing very dire. I do think blogs, or something very similar, should and will become a common tool for corporate and political communications, I just don't think we're going to be reading Lou Gerstner bitching about his daily drive to work anytime soon.

That said, the real problem with Dave's vision is that it completely fails to answer the question current-day bloggers are asking, which is "how can I make money from this?" They're publishing content, they're wondering how to make money doing it. Dave compares blogs to word processors because he makes tools for a living, so he's thinking about blogging from the perspective of the tools.

The bloggers aren't talking about the tools, they're talking about the web as a medium for publishing original content. The issue isn't really about blogs, it's about profitably publishing on the web. Individual publishers face many of the same problems as corporate publishers, i.e. subscriptions and advertising don't seem to be profitable, at least not yet.

Bloggers are producing a somewhat different type of content than most big publishers, in that it's largely referrals to and commentary on other content, and it's possible this may make some different opportunities. But bloggers have different challenges, they have a harder time using the web as a loss leader for other revenue streams, although many are authors who hawk their books, and theoretically some tech bloggers might promote consulting services or software (*cough*Userland*cough*Citydesk*).

If the big guys find a way to make web publishing independently profitable, the independents will most likely use the same tactics, even if they have to group together, for example offering a subscription which covers a group of blogs. What would be most interesting is if the bloggers discover a business model that allows an individual publisher to make a good living, but can't be scaled up to support an organization with lawyers, accountants, HR departments, etc.

A couple of links for independent publishers: