This took a while for me to write, because I seemed to have so much I wanted to say, but kept remembering other things as I wrote it. I hope it doesn't ramble too much.
Jason from Goldblogger responded to Chris Pirillo's post about his site (it's in the comments) (Hey Chris, have individual archive pages, it makes it easier to link :)). I wanted to say a little bit more about the subject. First off, I have no problem with people making some cash from their web site. I know I am an Amazon affiliate (though only one person buys things through it much). Why did I do it? Why not? At first I was just giving links to Amazon for books I was reading. But I figured since I had the links there already why not just make them affiliate links. Once I move my hosting off to a site where I have to pay I may ramp up the donation begging a little. But that's because I'm unemployed and hosting isn't free. As I mentioned in the comments on Chris' blog, my problem was more with the tone of the site. Jason ends up sounding like one of those late night salespeople on an infomercial, and that is what turned me off initially.
Some other random thoughts. While he is correct in saying that there are bloggers out there making money, they tend to be the exception. I tend to break blogs into a number of categories in my head. There's the personal blog. Where a lot of people have a little donation box up, but don't pull in much. The goal is usually to help cover hosting charges. To me, this is the big difference, people are getting into blogging because they like the idea of it. They aren't getting into it to make some cash. In a lot of ways it is similar the open source movement. One thing that always appealed to me about it is that people are writing software because they want to (or because they don't like how the current tools work). Recognition matters more than money. And while that recognition may lead to money, it's not the driving force. I think what this site fails to recognize is the mindset of a lot of the people who helped create the net. It reduces it to purely a way to make money.
The other kind of blog popping up lately is the developer blog. These tend to be connected to a product or company. What makes these useful is that they can provide information. In the software industry people are frustrated with waiting for when the next bug fix is going to come out. Most of the time they don't even know if the company is even addressing it. Look at what Dave Hyatt is doing with Safari. I love being able to read here and there about stuff that is being fixed with it. I hope that once the product comes out of beta we'll still hear from him. But even in this case, the value of the blog is in customer satisfaction. Which hopefully will translate to real dollars for the company.
Oh well, that's enough rambling for now. It's an interesting topic, even if I don't agree with goldblogger.
