John Ellis has an interesting article on the blogging phenomenon in Fast Company (via JohnEllis). There have been several good articles on this subject recently, but I think the prevailing idea (which most of these pieces seem to accept) that the most successful bloggers will ultimately make a living as web entrepreneurs is probably mistaken. (Maybe I'm wrong, but I just can't see Andrew Sullivan or Glenn Reynolds or any of the rest really getting all that worked up about the idea of selling paid advertising or moving lots of Amazon.com weed-wackers.)

Rather, I suspect that the big bloggers will join Dan Pink's Free Agent Nation, moving their blogs to sites that are willing to pay for the audience, and the reader loyalty, they bring with them. (How much more often would you find yourself on TNR's website -- looking at their ads and reading their articles -- if that's where, say, Andrew Sullivan's blog were hosted? Or on the Reason site if that's where you had to go to read Virginia Postrel?)

This solution is such a win-win for everybody -- the websites get fresh, daily content that brings its own set of eyeballs, and the bloggers get an economic model that frees them up to concentrate on what they do best -- that I can't believe some version of it won't eventually take off.
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