The website Technorati, has produced an annual ‘State of the Blogosphere ’ report since 2004 following the growths and trends across the blogging community. The recently released 2009 report confirms that while “more bloggers than ever are making money from blogs” the actual methods by which they do it appear to be as varied as the topics that they blog about.

According to Lijit, between 2008 and 2009 there has been a 68% increase in the number blogs with ad tags installed. This indicates that monetizing blogs is high on the priority list of most publishers.   However advertising is only part of the story.

Across the groups who make money from blogging, being a speaker at an industry event or contributing to print media is likely to contribute more to the bottom line than the monthly cheque from Google.

So if highly paid jobs in the “traditional” print media are become scarcer and few bloggers are getting rich on advertising revenues – where’s the money?

A role is emerging for semi-professional bloggers who earn an income as the conduit between their various specialty interests and the more traditional media.

In journalism the pillars of connectedness (to community) and competence are vital.  While newsrooms have the competence they are struggling in this world of “hyper-local” communities. The opposite is true for Citizen Journalists.

Enter the professional blogger. Able to engender and coordinate input from highly specialised communities and then in a curatorial role, review and channel the content as ‘journalist processors’.

By crowdsourcing such stories, traditional media can keep costs down while the professional blogger input ensures that quality control is maintained.

Armed with quality, specialised content “hyper-local” advertising can be targeted and a model for pro-am journalism begins to take shape.

We live in interesting times.