The perception of considering a blog as a source of income has been created. These days, many bloggers are concerned about making money from their blogs. They obtain helpful information through sharing their own skills to earn money.

 Since Google introduced the service of contextual advertising for blogs, called "AdSense", Naver and Daum, which are domestic representative portal sites, have also adopted the service, respectively called "AdPost" and "viewAD". The service offers  advertisements of a cost per click(CPC) model, so whenever visitors click advertisements posted on blogs, the owners of the blogs receive profits. Plus, bloggers also generate income from advertisements of a cost per action(CPA) model and a pay per post(PPP) model. The former one lets the owners of the blogs gain profits when visitors purchase goods or sign up for a membership after they click the advertisements. The latter one pays manuscript fees to bloggers who post on their blogs with contents that companies would like to publicize.

  In addition, bloggers receive commissions by holding group purchase events on their blogs. If posts or pictures which are posted serially on blogs gain popularity, the owners of the blogs make money by publishing books with the contents. Moreover, bloggers earn money through delivering lectures, providing consultation, contributing manuscripts and a wide array of events.

 Moon Sung-sil, who is a housewife, and Ko Jae-youl, who is a reporter, both are representative power bloggers in Korea. They have steadily put up expertise related to their fields and have interactions with lots of visitors on their blogs. Finally, they have formed a huge community, called a "power blog." Moon Sung-sil published 4 cookbooks by utilizing contents on her blog, and the books became best-selling books. Ko Jae-youl has posted up contents covering politics, social issues, and entertainment on his blog, and he has been giving lectures and publishing books utilizing the contents.       

  However, most power bloggers avoid contextual advertising on their blogs because they think that it does harm their blogs' image, so they don't pay a lot of attention to profits through blogs.

 Among people who were chosen as power bloggers by Naver in 2010, many of them have never generated incomes from their blogs. Through the main sources, such as posting reviews, contributing manuscripts and publishing books, some people have made incomes. They have earned anywhere from a minimum of 100,000 won to a maximum of one million won per month. However, those incomes are not steady incomes.       

  "Though bloggers create profits from their blogging activities, the profits should be considered just incidental benefits," said Park Won-ik, who was one of the 2010 Naver power bloggers. A number of internal power bloggers put much meaning on the blogging activities themselves. For the power bloggers, earning money from the activities seems to be only a subsidiary thing.

By Kong Hae-gyoung

hg31@cbnu.ac.kr