The other way to make money from blogs… sell!

AOL confirms Weblogs buyout | The Register

Hot on the heels of Gawker media’s deal with VNU for distribution/syndication in Europe comes the response from Weblogs Inc (erstwhile baiter of Nick Denton, and loud proclaimer of being the ‘business model of web 2.0′).

Calcanis’ answer to how to monetise his blog empire? Sell it to AOL!

From AOL’s perspective I have to wonder how this is any different from the Portal Dreams Phase of the web, when every portal had content editors and syndicated puffery in every ‘zone’ – to provide “stickiness” and to attract traffic. Hmm. This time round it’s a collection of mis-spelled perimeter sites (eg “Joystiq” for gaming info). Surely this is no more than creating your own affiliate/syndication network of part time hobbyist/journalists?

I wonder how many staffers you could have bought for the alleged $25m?

Despite the hype, this seems like a yesteryear deal to me. Then again, maybe I’m just miffed not to be trousering large ones from AOL 😉