Aug 14, 2008 06:20 PM
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San Francisco, 12:24 PM
Tue Feb 9
56 posts in the last 24 hours
Mommyblog superstar Heather "Dooce" Armstrong can use "a lewd word" on her masthead and hold onto her J.C. Penney sponsorship. Why can't the rest of the ladybloggers cash in while cussing? Venture capitalist Tim Draper puts it best: “I love women. Women are more than half the population, and they do most of the shopping." Your womanblog is only worth something if you type one-handed, a shopping bag clutched in the other.
Armstrong makes for a nice story, but she's far from exemplary. The Times gets this much right: So long as women bloggers stick to topics that publishers know they can sell ads against, they're in business:
To the disappointment of some women who want sites that focus on serious issues like politics, advertisers are not interested in every kind of content. They gravitate to the tried-and-true topics of women’s magazines: fashion, beauty, celebrities and love life.
But blogging is now a crowded space, and it's next to impossible for an unknown to start blogging and attract a sponsor-defying audience. For any woman looking to get a piece of those blog dollars now, her choices boil down to allying with a larger publisher, and sticking to writing about beauty, babies, and other aspirational homemaking hints.
Oh, you were hoping to get paid by rich white men like Tim Draper to write about girl power? That's almost as cute as the baby outfit you just picked up at Kidiniki for your nephew.
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