Two interesting news bits for political blogpreneurs

1.

If you are a blogger who is looking into making money out of your online publishing, there are a number of blogs you ought to read on a daily basis, one of them being TechCrunch. There's much to learn from Michael Arrington's blog, especially if you were brought up to believe that an Arts & Science education was better without having a couple of business courses under your belt. Boy ... do I have regrets.

Anyhow, yesterday Michael posted a bit about a new commercial project going beta, Political Base. Here's a bit of what Arrington had to say :

The site, which focuses on local, state and national elections and other political matters, is timed perfectly to take advantage of the 2008 presidential elections and the estimated $4.5 billion that will be spent on advertising to promote candidates and issues.

PoliticalBase is a structured Wiki that encourages research and debate. Users can edit most of the text but canâ€™t change the underlying database structure. That allows the site to slice and dice data for comparison purposes (something that canâ€™t be done with the free-for-all Wikipedia) but still gives the siteâ€™s community the ability to create and edit content.

I wondered aloud at a TechPresident meeting if this signals that political blog properties are viable business opportunities after all.

2.

Jupiter Research just released this morning a study titled Politics on the Net : Reaching Audiences That Matter, and it's a bit of good news for political blogs like this one, which have seen a sginificant decline in ad revenue.

The good news? Here ya got them :

Key Finding
Active voters are slightly less likely than are overall online users to participate in social networks, but they utilize this medium nonetheless. However, their usage suggests that politically oriented and news-oriented blogs and comment sites would be the best choice for political organizing and advertising.

What do you know? Political blogs are indeed better at targetting political advertising ... duh!

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Words to live by

If you go ahead and boycott you may as well should brace yourself to risk losing your job. But to advise that as a reason not to is as wortheless as telling someone not to go to war because they may die! Obviously in fighting for anything worthy there is much risk and much sacrifice and that is what America is all about.

This is a monumental movement. Has the tumult of illegal immigrants marching helped their cause in the past? Yes it has. It brought immigrants out of the shadows and into the light. It put the 'A' for amnesty in Senate's immigration debate. What will a boycott do I am not sure but I am suspicious of all the nay sayers who tell others to be mediocre in their endeavors.

The hypocrisy of greed has led to this by allowing companies to partake in illegal hiring practices. And everyone is guilty of that from politicians to farmers to those who needed their garden hedged. This is the unfortunate backlash of a broken immigration system. We only have ourselves to blame and should stop scapegoating and criminalizing those who came here in search of a better life.

— Louis Pagán, Bloguero
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