While some blogs are backed by political parties and organizations, including Muslim Brotherhood bloggers, most prominent liberal, secular leftist and democratic bloggers in Egypt are independent of any funding or resources provided by political powers. This means that the funding options they might have are limited to sponsorship, forms of advertisements, syndicating content to, or joining altogether, mainstream media. Osterwalder and Pigneur (2008) explain that organizations have several options to stream revenues; asset sale, usage fee, subscription fee, lending, licensing, brokerage and advertising. Of those, advertising and licensing, which is content syndication for the media, are the most relevant as research has shown that paying for online content has proven unsuccessful in Egypt (El Sayed, 2009).
Forrester and Powell (2008) advise bloggers that there are certain things to keep in mind to attract advertisements. Along with keeping a positive, neutral and objective tone, bloggers need to watch for the amount of advertisements they carry as too many ads can chase readers away. They also warn against offensive postings “Yes, the internet does have a spirit of free speech and free enterprise, but if you are trying to make money, avoid commentary that could cause offense,” (2008, p.5). But it is not just a matter of caution to increase
hits, when using ad agents like Google Adsense, bloggers need to follow terms of service that include steering away from offensive content and hate speech. The terms of service on Google include
“You agree that the Site does not at any time contain any pornographic, hate-related, violent or offensive content or contain any other material, products or services that violate or encourage conduct that would violate any criminal laws, any other applicable laws, any third party rights, or any service policies issued by Google from time to time.”
This clause can be subject to various interpretations as terms are left loose, for instance, would the calls for civil disobedience fall under call for violence? Similarly, footage of police brutality, for instance, may fall under violent content as well.
While setting up a blog, users have the option to choose from a variety of open-source platforms, which offer different options as some platforms require that they control the ad space and others leave it up to the user. Bloggers have the option of running their own ad spaces, hiring online advertisement companies as their agents or using services like Google Adsense. Political blogs in Egypt have an advantage in advertisement in that they write about key issues and so come up in the top results on search engines, which attracts advertisers. When choosing ad programs, bloggers have three main options; contextual ads, ad networks and affiliate programs. Contextual ads “put advertisements on your website that are in the same contexts as (closely related to) the content of the webpage where you place those advertisements,” (Forrester and Powell, 2008, p.79). This program, however, does not seem
relevant to political blogs as they normally carry current affairs issues and so cannot link to any product or service advertisers provide, although they could simply relate to Egypt. AD networks are agents for ad spaces, they could be a group of advertisers or publishers, (Forrester and Powell, 2008). Finally, affiliate programs are programs that focus on one product or service and they normally pay higher than contextual programs, these include Amazon.com and Commission Junction. These last two categories seem to apply more to bloggers than contextual ads. It remains to be studied, however, what categories bloggers are using, if any, and how different categories affect the bloggers’ content, as a sub-research question under the effect of existence or lack of ads on blogs.
Forrester and Powell (2008) explain that there are two other types of revenue streams for bloggers, spin-off revenue and personal revenue. Spin-off revenue is revenue generated from referring to other things or people when the blog has high traffic, while personal revenue is revenue generated from selling the bloggers’ expertise. Referral revenue puts in question integrity and objectivity of the blogger as the blogger is paid when they mention or recommend the advertiser and may not be the most relevant method to political bloggers.
Personal revenue could be generated through many ways. Political bloggers could also possibly use their skills in providing their services to companies or organizations that might want them to run their blogs or social media accounts, on the side of political blogging. Similarly, bloggers could join mainstream media as freelancers, part-timers or full-timers. As scholars like Taki (2010, p.191) point out, some bloggers in the Arab world are either
former journalists, current ones, or have ties with the mainstream media, which came to collaborate with them recently for topics they are more experienced in. Monetizing social media platforms for micro-bloggers or bloggers using those platforms is also a possible revenue stream for some outlets. YouTube, for instance, allows users to post ads on their videos and set up Google AdSense and then the user might become a YouTube partner if they have managed to monetize videos with large numbers of viewers. Partners have more tools on the platform and are able to generate more income through sponsorships. Users can also generate money from their Facebook and Twitter accounts through affiliate marketing or sponsoring certain products on their posts and Tweets. This means brands would pay them to Tweet or post on Facebook favorably about their products. Affiliate marketing, like other types of advertising, puts those once-free platforms under pressures of the political economy of the media in the sense that they cannot write negatively about brands advertising with them and that they will have to alter content to attract the maximum number of readers and so maximize profits.