Akkam’s Razor

A long time ago, I posted about running your blog as a business in order to secure a tax break by claiming it as a business. I listed a few things one should do in order to legitimize blogging as a possible revenue generator.

Next came questions regarding what exactly is the standard for journalists, and do bloggers necessarily meet it. As we’ve all seen, bloggers in generally are gradually becomming more and more accepting in the “legitimate” world of journalism, including press credentials at events like the various political conventions, Live 8, and even testifying in front of the FEC for how to handle political campaign legislation regarding bloggers.

So now, the next new meme is that of the online magazine (you can read he snark at Instapundit and Atrios Eschaton. Although their online magazine transition is partially made in jest, we are kind of seeing some of the visual and functional characteristics of magazines crossing over.

Blogs have a feel, much like the masthead, TOC, and page layouts of a magazine. There advertising (of course), and the ability to “subscribe” via RSS (and feel free to do the same here. There’s also the tendency to inflate one’s visitor count. Disclaimer: For example, page views will be higher than visitor count and higher still than unique visitors. The statcounter on the lower right measures page loads only. The IP address of all PCs I use on a regular basis are on the blocklist so my normal visits are not counted.

Popularity: 4% [?]