One of the neat little sub-features of Amazon’s Kindle is being able to subscribe to blogs on it. You have to pay for the privilege, but for heavy Kindle users, it makes sense as you can get the content delivered to you wirelessly for your favorite blogs. You know, like TechCrunch.
But the biggest limiting factor of this so far is that only the big blogs have been included in the blog directory. Starting today, anyone can make their blogs available via the new Kindle Publishing for Blogs Beta program.
All you have to do is make your blog’s feed available to the Kindle Store, and Amazon will do the rest, formatting your content for the device. According to the email from Amazon, after a few easy steps, your blog should be up and ready to go in the Kindle Store after about 12 to 48 hours of processing. Not bad.
As with blogs currently in the program, these new blogs will get 30% of the monthly blog subscription price for every subscriber Amazon signs up. In a world where mobile app developers traditionally keep 70% or more of the revenues, 30% seems awfully low.
And exactly how much Amazon will charge for each blog isn’t totally clear, other than Amazon says it will “define the price based on what we deem is a fair value for customers.” Most blogs currently go for $1.99 a month. Unfortunately, even if you want to, you can’t give your blog away for free on the device. Amazon has that WhisperNet to maintain, after all.
As a Kindle owner, I currently subscribe to a few of my favorite blogs, but for most of the rest I use Instapaper to bookmark articles and sync them over email to my device (which does cost a ridiculous $0.15 an email unfortunately — but Instapaper sends only one digest a day). The bottom line is that with 30% of the subscription price going to publishers, this isn’t likely to be a big source of income for most sites. There are simply too many blogs and the Kindle market is simply not that big. And the people who will pay for blogs on it is even less.
$1.99 for a blog is ridiculous.
Whispernet US only Kindle thing is ridiculous. They should open up the 3G modem, unlock it when sold worldwide (lock it only when subsidized and with full data plans).
Blog loading needs to be using micropayments something like $0.01 per-post that is loaded. Or they need to charge per Gygabyte used and then offer full unrestricted blog loading while still offering bloggers who want to charge the means to do it.
Finally, they should display advertising for example on bottom 10% of the page and monetize blogs through that.
My guess is Amazon doesn’t want to sell more Kindles then they do.
My thoughts exactly. They seem to nickel and dime you every chance they get.
They’re following in Apples footsteps.
Yes, this seems to be the Apple way. First they created a product that had an Apple-like design, now it is Apple like business model.
@Charbax: True. Your suggestions would be kind of good for Kindle & Amazon. Right now, it looks worse. Bloggers can also benefit if such a mutually-beneficial set-up is done. Else, it is useless.
Only 30% share that goes to bloggers is also totally Apple-like.
A touchscreen on the Kindle and Bluetooth or USB-host for full sized keyboard input would make blog comment posting from the Kindle much more usable. Discussions around blog posts are a big part of what blogs are about.
Apple pays app developers 70%. Amazon pays 30%. So what about this reminds you of Apple?
Yup, they should facilitate easy commenting, else the blog posting/updating on Kindle would lack-luster
Spend your money on a Netbook, get 200 times the utility out of it and not be stuck in Amazon’s locked playground. If you want to rent books, go to a library.
no eink. no easy UI.
paying to receive free blogs is acrazy idea
paying for the delivery. Think of it this way- your still paying for blogs like these, just in a monthly fee for internet and none of it goes to the actual blogs.
“after a few easy steps”
I just went to the website. Those “easy steps” include:
1) Giving them either your tax ID number or SS #.
2) Giving them the routing information to your bank account.
….unless you want them to mail you checks, in which case there is an $8.00 “processing fee” taken out of EVERY check they cut for you…
That is just TOOOO much information for me to fork over to the good & ‘trustworthy’ people of amazon.com… just to get 30% of the revenue?? …not that anyone in their right mind would pay anything for a blog that can already be read for free, but heck – even the apple app store gives developers 70% of the profit.
… and I’m sure that ‘automatic formatting’ that they do “for” you would delete all of your paid ads etc…. so basically you’re going to lose what meager ad revenue you were already generating to get a small fraction of what amazon hopes to make off of your blog….on their ‘closed’ network for people who are already shelling out $300-$500 for the device needed to read the stuff.
How does ANY blog writer think this is a good deal for them??
That information (SSN or Tax #) is required by law, since they have to report **aggregate** yearly payments over $500 to the IRS.
Also..as for the ad revenue: it’s a guaranteed 30% of the subscription PER READER. Given the PPI or PPC rates of most advertising networks these days, you’re lucky to get a 0.1% of the ad charge per reader.
This is a good idea to SUPPLEMENT your blog income, not replace it.
You said it all. Totally agree.
Am I the only one who has noticed that one item of info they don’t ask for is any validation that you actually own the blog in question?
Hmmm. I think I sense a business opportunity….
lmao who would pay for a free blog, o right, the same person who wouold buy the pos kindle
I refuse to pay for blogs on my Kindle.
I’m always at my computer or have my iPhone with me and it’s free to read blogs on those via Google Reader or whatnot.
if you would try just one- i would recommend the NYTs Headlines Blog. Up to date news always. Great thing. Theres even a 2 week free viewing window to see if you like it…
Why subscribe to NYT on a Kindle and pay when Avantgo would give you the same thing for free on most normal mobile devices, with offline access included?
You only pay if you want a higher volume of content per sync. They give you 3mb for free. (of course NYT could take up about 2/3 of that)
They even have a bookmarklet for adding sites to your channel list, as you are browsing the web with your desktop browser.
I have a crappy 8 year old PocketPC that I got for $0 that I wouldn’t trade for a Kindle. Despite its age, it can do so much more.
Correction: NYT doesn’t count against your 3mb limit. It’s a special case.
I think this is another blow to the newspaper business and bloggers like us. Amazon will keep 70% and keep you contents. This is not a good way to make money online.
You can also bookmark the blog urls (or feed urls) in the kindle2 browser and just read for free there.
That is an excellent point Mr. Kimsal… I didn’t know you could already do that on a kindle… so I suppose that means Amazon would have to disable that free functionality to force people to pay for their blog fix ??
I couldn’t find this on the site, but does your provided rss feed need to have the full content or does amazon fetch the content from your links?
I’m still waiting for any remotely good reason to ever use a kindle. I already have a laptop that does everything the kindle does and more so why would I pay money for a separate crippled device to lug around and then pay for content that is free anywhere else? From day 1 the kindle has made no sense and I still don’t understand why they ever sold a single unit.
Your one good reason for buying a Kindle is if you like to read and would like to purchase books on the fly. If you don’t, then knock it off, the Kindle is not trying to compete with your laptop.
As to the crippled argument, that’s a ludicrous piece of poppycock as well. I’ve read a number of books totally free (and with no DRM too!) from sites like Feedbooks and Project Gutenberg. The Kindle handles them just fine. It’s not the device enforcing these restrictions, it’s the publishing companies deciding they need to control how you can use the content you purchase.
Why can’t I purchase those same books to read on my laptop that I already own? My point is this is an extra device that doesn’t do anything my laptop can’t already do.
As for being crippled I meant it’s performs a limited set of functions that my laptop can perform, but can’t do many other things that the laptop can do. Bonus points for using the word “poppycock” though.
Just ordered the DX last week. I have no prob paying to subscribe to my fav blogs.
And since I don’t really have enough time for a whole book these days, its basically a nice rss reader for me.
#win-win
Same here. I mostly read newspapers and business/news blogs on my kindle. read a book here and there…
stuff like the WSJ and Times you have to pay for anyways- kindle gives you no ink on your hands, easy transportation, and up to date news. not bad at all…
This one of the electronic that has some future.
I have a vision that there will be a goldrush period where every splogs from overseas signs up to sell on the Kindle store. And taking it one step further – there will at least a dozen “Work at Home – Get Rich Quick with the Kindle Store” websites pop up before the weekend.
So, how does a blogger who has ads and links on their blog, or even write about other products with affiliate links fulfill this “agreement” aspect?
Isn’t this basically stating that the blogger can’t have any advertisements in the feed to begin with? Unless I’m missing a button that says “stripped down” version.
“You will deliver a full text, well formed XML feed of each publication from which you have removed all advertisements and other materials that are primarily intended to advertise or promote products or services and from which you have removed all video and / or user-generated links (e.g., Reddit, DIGG, and Technorati).”
感觉还不是很便携式啊，如果加入可弯曲的OLED屏蔽是不是更强大呢，通过互联网每天实时更新新闻内容，真是太爽了，信息真是随时随地的获取啊，坐在马桶上也能最快的速度看奥巴马的最新报道了，嘿嘿。人类文明的又一大进步啊。
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that is way too much pricing for a blog. They do not have a monopoly yet but they started behaving like apple.
Cool alternative blogging site !
Amazon roks !
Makes sense for news papers, not sure about blogs. However it could serve as an ad free alternative revenue stream for your Blog.
F,MF,F
FREE FCUCKING TRAFFIC IF BLOKES BUYS INTO IT TOO.
CAN U IMAGINE A SEX BLOG X 0.59 X 50,000 SUBSCRIBERS/MONTH?
I am confused. Nobody seens to provide a clear explanation on the internet on whether this Kindle Blog is same as Amazon “Blogs We Read”. I would like to publish my blog on it.
It sounds like kindle will serve a niche market. Could someone share the statistics of its usage vs the iPhone or other smart phones.
its great news that kindle publishing open for all the blogs and thanks for sharing such a wonderful info.
Interesting post as for me. It would be great to read something more about this topic.
Thank you for the article. I just created an account with kindle and added my blog. It is under pending for now, but I hope they approve it soon.