Early Transition to Blog Pro

By DENNIS NISHI

When blogs first came to the Internet over a decade ago, nobody believed they would make money. But Mark Frauenfelder, a former engineer and writer, believed otherwise. He quit his job at Wired magazine and turned his popular print zine into boingboing.net. The blog has since become one of the most popular sites, according to Technorati and Comscore. And Mr. Frauenfelder says he earns a six-figure salary doing something he loves.

Courtesy Dennis Nishi

Full name: Mark Frauenfelder
Age: 48
Hometown: Golden, Colorado
First job: Musician
Current position: Professional blogger and founder of boingboing.net
Education: Bachelor of Science, Colorado State University
Years in the industry: 9
How I got here in 10 words or less: I kept looking for what was right for me.

Q: Where did the idea for Boing Boing come from?

A: I had read about how people were using desktop publishing software to create special-interest publications. I decided to report on how computers were increasingly being used for creative purposes in 1988. I called the new zine Boing Boing because it conveyed optimism, energy and bouncing from idea to idea.

Q: How did you end up at Wired?

A: I got a call from Wired in 1993; they said they had been reading Boing Boing and wanted to get that kind of energy into the magazine. I moved to San Francisco and ... became an associate editor at the magazine. (My wife) took over the day-to-day editing of Boing Boing.

Q: Why did you abandon print and digitize Boing Boing?

A: Two of our major distributors had failed at the same time. ... Not long after, I discovered blogs and loved how easy they made it to publish, so I turned BoingBoing into one in 2000. It had already become a web zine (so) it seemed like a natural evolution.

Q: How did you build your audience?

A: I found pretty early that the more you blog, the more people will come back. I had asked a friend to step in when I went on vacation. When I got back, the statistics had skyrocketed because he was blogging over 20 times a day versus the one or two posts I did. So I asked him, and later, two others to join.

Q: How much original content do you create, versus pointing to other sites?

A: Early on, Boing Boing was like an aggregator. We've since moved towards creating more original content. I've been blogging a lot about my urban homesteading experiments building a chicken coop and a three-string guitar. (One blogger) travels around the world and shoots video.

Q: What's your major source of revenue?

A: In 2004, I contacted [Industry Standard publisher] John Battelle who helped us sell ad space. He also started doing that with other blogs, through Federated Media.

Q: Does the site make enough from advertising alone to cover costs and salaries?

A: It does, but it's hard to grow on just advertising. We've been considering some new ideas like paid premium content. We also plan to collaborate with Make magazine to create a Makers Marketplace. It's a place for people that make handmade things. We'd get a commission.

Write to Dennis Nishi at cjeditor@dowjones.com