Blogebrity

A year in the life of Kottke

On the first anniversary of “going pro”, Jason Kottke reflects on a year as a full-time problogger. And let’s just say, he isn’t exactly chomping at the bit for Year Two to begin.

After collecting almost $40,000 from “micropatrons” (in lieu of accepting ads on Kottke.org), Jason spent the past year basically doing what he’s done for the previous seven–blogging away. From his account, it sounds like Kottke experienced something that many a blogger has observed — rising to the top of the A-list (and staying there) would be so damn easy….if only life didn’t intervene.

As it were, Jason spent the last year traveling, doing Blogebrity interviews, getting engaged, and just all around living a 9-5 life, as opposed to treating Kottke.org like the startup company he envisioned it as one year ago today. Because of this (and the rigors of running a Micropatron system) he’s announced that he won’t accept donations for the site again this year, opting instead to work on other projects and continuing to blog when time permits.

What does this mean for professional bloggers? Very little. Considering the novel (e.g. ZERO ads) approach that Kottke took, his experience doesn’t directly mirror that of many professional bloggers, virtually all of whom still rely on advertising dollars as their primary source of bloggy income.

At least there is one thing Jason doesn’t need to worry about — his List status. Once he marries Meg, he’s guaranteed to be an A-lister for life.

This entry was posted by Kyle Bunch on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Jason Kottke, Meg Hourihan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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