The Wall Street Journal has published an interesting article “America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire “. We can see some interesting numbers/stats for blogging. There are over 20 million bloggers in America, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income.

Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall.

Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as “spokesbloggers” — paid by advertisers to blog about products. Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours — 50 to 60 hours a week.

the Technorati report says that of those bloggers who had 100,000 or more unique visitors, the average income is $75,000. True, it’s not the median, but it is the average. We can quibble about how easy it is to make this kind of money — but the point is, the huge potential is there.

Source: America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire