In the United States, political bloggers have taken on an importance that would be unthinkable in the UK. Several have a profile comparable with the leading print-media and broadcast commentators. The Drudge Report is the media phenomenon of our age. The Huffington Post and Daily Kos are as familiar to the political establishment as the omnipresent ex-ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson and Peggy Noonan, former Ronald Reagan speechwriter turned commentator. U.S. bloggers are prominent in all U.S. election coverage. Hundreds of political bloggers make real money from their activities and devote their entire working day to their online activity.

In Britain it’s very different. The development of the UK political blogosphere, while much heralded in almost-weekly newspaper features, is way behind that of the United States. Few bloggers have any sort of media profile and even fewer make any money at all out of their online activities. There are only four independent UK political blogs with what one could describe as a mass readership – and by that I mean an audience of at least 50,000 unique users each month. Guido Fawkes, the anarcho-libertarian blogger who specialises in political gossip and scandal, boasts a readership of more than 100,000. conservativehome.com, edited by Tim Montgomerie, recently joined by The Daily Telegraph’s Jonathan Isaby, and my own blog, Iain Dale’s Diary, both boast monthly audiences of more than 70,000. PoliticalBetting.com attracts more than two million pageviews each month.

But there are others that are building an audience which any normal website would envy. Liberal Democrat Voice, the LibDem equivalent of conservativehome, is about to break through the 20,000 monthly-user barrier; Conservative technogeek Dizzy Thinks is up to 25,000; and the libertarian swear blog Devil’s Kitchen has an average monthly audience of 25,000. And there are plenty of others snapping at their heels, including Labour Home, John Redwood’s Diary, Liberal Conspiracy and Tim Worstall. When you consider that the New Statesman has a circulation of around 25,000 and The Spectator a little over 70,000, all these blogs can be considered influential to one degree or another.

Over the past 12 months, political blogs run by mainstream media (MSM) organisations have taken on a new importance. Virtually every newspaper or magazine has now ordered its team of political journalists to get in on the act. The Daily Telegraph has Three Line Whip; The Times, Red Box and Comment Central; The Guardian, Comment is Free; and even The Independent has finally caught up with its Open House blog. The Daily Mail’s Ben Brogan is considered to be the best individual political journalist-cum-blogger, while The Spectator’s Coffee House has become one of the most widely-read political blogs in the country. But they have all struggled to find as big an audience as the leading independent bloggers. Despite the marketing power of the Telegraph, its political blogs struggle to get half the audience of Guido Fawkes, while Ben Brogan and Sky News political editor Adam Boulton’s Boulton & Co, although widely read in the Westminster village, attract barely a fifth of the audience of conservativehome or Iain Dale’s Diary.

Few bloggers thought of earning money

Many in the MSM believe bloggers to be wannabe journalists, or even failed journalists. That may be true for a small minority, but the rest of us regard it as an insult. If I wanted to be a journalist, I would be. I didn’t set out on my blogging journey to do anything journalistic. I set out to write an online diary providing daily political comment. I never set out to be investigative or to break news. The fact that I do so from time to time is more by accident than design. I still regard my blog as a vehicle for personal political commentary. And I think I am typical of many of the many one-man-band bloggers.

Because his blog is funded by polling entrepreneur Stephan Shakespeare, conservativehome’s Tim Montgomerie is an exception, but Guido Fawkes, Devil’s Kitchen, Dizzy Thinks and PoliticalBetting.com are all run by enterprising individuals who have created niches. With the level of audience these blogs have reached one might assume there is an advertising pot of gold out there. In the future that might be the case, but it certainly hasn’t been found yet. Advertisers are wary of partisan political blogs, even if they have the kind of readership demographics most advertisers would die for. For example, 10 per cent of my readers earn more than £100,000. Blog readership is predominantly male, aged 25-50 and most likely will travel abroad and read quality newspapers.

My blog traffic-levels are attractive to many. Twice now I have been approached by mainstream media organisations – they shall remain nameless – who wanted me to blog on their platforms. I could certainly see the advantages from their point of view, but what was in it for me? The money on offer was derisory and the loss of independence would have had an effect. At the moment I can blog what I like, whether it’s to do with politics, football or some personal idiosyncrasy. I doubt if an MSM blogging platform would welcome my musings about the death of my godmother.

The blog provides a public platform

Blogging is almost a byword for specialisation. And with specialisation can come real influence. Richard North co-writes the EU Referendum blog, specialising in foreign policy, and the Defence of the Realm blog on defence issues. He now enjoys a status within the MoD far higher than most defence correspondents. Former Defence Secretary Des Browne irritated defence correspondence beyond belief when he told them: “This is Richard North – he writes the Defence of the Realm blog which has had more influence on MoD procurement policy then the rest of you put together.” North says he has never seen a group of journalists look more annoyed. But he says that far from earning money from his blog, the effort he puts into it means he is subsidising it. There are other specialist blogs that ought to be a magnet for advertising in their own spheres, yet advertisers have so far shied away from the likes of NHS Blog Doctor, Burning our Money and Inspector Gadget. Crime writer Martin Edwards says that he, too, earns money indirectly from his blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name?, but that’s mainly because it has improved his reputation: “Since I started blogging [every day] a year ago, my profile and sales have increased and I’ve won a major award for the first time. I don’t attribute this mainly to the blog, but I do think the blog creates increased interest and profile, and it must be helpful.” Liz Upton, who writes the Gastronomy Domine food blog, agrees. “I started my blog when I was working in educational publishing and loathing it,” she says. She intended that the blog should work as a portfolio for a kind of writing she wanted to do professionally and reckons it has served its purpose well. “I left my job and went freelance, and I now have some huge clients, including National Geographic and Penguin. There’s absolutely no way I could have got the exposure I needed to find work with them without the blog. Many of my clients have approached me directly after having read it, which is just as well, because I’m rubbish at networking in the old-fashioned way.”

Some bloggers have earned money directly from their blogging by obtaining book deals. Former Sunday Times journalist Judith O’Reilly won many plaudits for her blog Wife in the North, where she told the painful story of following her husband north and the changes it meant for their family. She reportedly earned a £70,000 advance for a book. Conservative PR guru Ellee Seymour has also signed a book deal that would never have happened without her blogging profile. Speechwriter Nick Thomas started a blog a year ago with three aims: acknowledge, advise and advertise. He says: “ [I wanted to] acknowledge the hospitality and appreciation from the audiences I speak to, advise other speakers by passing on presentation skills tips and, of course, advertise my services as a speaker, speechwriter/comedywriter and coach.” The plan has paid dividends and brought him work he would not have got without the blog.

Bloggers, me among them, grow incredibly frustrated when newspaper diary columns steal their original work and pass it off as their own. The Sun’s Whip column and the Mail’s Ephraim Hardcastle are the main culprits. On some days both columns are stuffed full of stories they have lifted (sometimes almost word for word) from the likes of Guido Fawkes. Had he or I sold them the stories directly we’d probably both be several thousand pounds richer each year. More fool us, some might say. The Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary is far more willing to credit where a story came from, and because of it gets far more tip-offs.

Earlier this year, the LabourHome blog was sold by Alex Hilton and Jag Singh to Mike Danson, the new co-owner of the New Statesman. They were paid more than £50,000 for it – an astonishing sum bearing in mind its lack of readers. But Danson invested because of its potential. Hilton and Singh were wise to cash in. However, they were only able to do so because the blog is not reliant on a single person for content. Guido Fawkes calculated that if LabourHome was worth £50,000, his own blog must be worth £1 million. Up to a point, Lord Fawkes. A blog like his or mine is worth anything only if its author comes as part of the package. We are our blogs. Blogs such as PoliticalBetting, conservativehome or Labourhome are group efforts and are therefore more suitable for web entrepreneurs to take over.

Slate.com recently revealed that a blog in theUnited States with 100,000 readers a month earns around $75,000 a year from it. A few earn more than $200,000. Bloggers on this side of the Atlantic can only dream of such rewards for their efforts. It has been suggested that some bloggers could charge a subscription for their work. Maybe, but it goes against all the (nonexistent) rules of blogging. It would shrink the audience and be very exclusive. Would I rather have 1,000 readers paying a few pounds a month to read my blog or 70,000 reading it free? Clearly the latter.

Slate.com tells of a blogger called Jason Kottke, who quit his job to blog full time. He asked his readers to support him, and they did. More than 1,450 of them coughed up nearly $40,000, but he abandoned the experiment within a year, worried that people wouldn’t contribute again. I have little doubt that if I decided to charge I would be able to raise a substantial one-off sum to keep me going, but could I do that every year? I’m not sure I would risk it just yet, but, although political blogging in the UK is three or four years behind the United States, it is flourishing. Readership is rising year on year – in my case by 50 per cent over the past 12 months. Newspapers and magazines would kill for that. Blogs here haven’t got the money-making ability of those in the U.S., nor their influence, or their profile. But in three or four years, they just might.