Put Up or Shut Up: Blogging in Philadelphia Will Cost You

The city of brotherly love isn’t so loving towards blogging brothers (or sisters). A number of Philadelphia bloggers were recently slapped with a demand for $300 to pay for a business privilege license. {Philadelphia City Paper via Marketing Pilgrim} The license fee, which in several cases exceeds what the bloggers have earned in revenue, is accompanied by demands for wage tax, business privilege tax and net profit tax.

Sean Barry, of music blog Circle of Fits, has an archive going back to 2005, but says he has made $11 from the ads on his site in that time. Marilyn Bess, who runs the blog MsPhillyOrganic, has only had her blog since 2008. At $50 in profit, she’s done a bit better monetarily, but hardly enough to make the cost of the business privilege license seem reasonable.

Both blogs are hosted on free blog services Blogspot and WordPress.com respectively.

On his blog, Barry adds “Listen, I don’t make any money on this blog, but if I did it would either be spent on fine pale ales or a lifetime supply of Cookie Crisp…I’m not a hookers and blow sort of guy.

If the city wants to come after me, have at it, I have nothing but some pristine bagged and boarded comics and a signed copy of Tonight’s the Night…and you’ll have to fight me for those…. but, in reality, I’m just a writer who likes to go to shows and complain about everything, and have had to do so out of pocket…for the lifetime of this blog. I said I have made 11 dollars over the course of two years from my ads..that will get you lukewarm Bud Light at a Phillies game…What I didn’t say, is that I don’t even know how to GET that 11 dollars that I’ve made…it’s out in the digital ether somewhere…”

What makes this even more ridiculous is the fact that personal and hobbyist blogs, like the ones Barry and Bess maintain, are often not eligible for the type of advertising that would result in any substantial amount of income. Blogs that don’t have a unique domain name are often excluded from larger affiliate programs, unless they have a large amount of traffic. That would exclude Circle of Fits and MsPhillyOrganic. Higher paying banner ads are sometimes available to small publishers through networks like Glam, but they typically pay on a CPM basis. CPM stands for cost per thousand impressions, and a typical network rate can work out to be anywhere from $2-30.

Personal and hobbyist blogs with low amounts of traffic typically receive amounts on the lower end, and can often have difficulty even getting to 1000 impressions. Which means that even with an overly generous estimation, many small blogs are unlikely to earn more than $400 in a year. Being realistic, earnings can often amount to the low double digit figures that Barry and Bess quote. Perhaps something to be included on a personal income tax statement, but hardly anything that adds up to a business.

Restricting the ability to legally blog to those who can afford hundreds of dollars, regardless of what they actually earn, seems to be a sure way to discourage actual small businesses from setting up shop in Philadelphia. We know local governments are struggling, but this is a harsh way to raise revenue and one that we hope doesn’t catch on.