europeforvisitors - 1:15 am on Sep 25, 2007 (gmt 0)

So in a nutshell, the online business is still largely a hobby outfit ...

Not really, but it's true that some topics and audiences lend themselves to "monetization" than others do. Still, that's always been true, offline as well as online. A computer or car magazine might pay its writers more than a dollar a word, while a respected literary quarterly might pay in copies. An editorial Web site devoted to travel planning might generate significant income from targeted advertising and affiliate commissions, while an editorial Web site devoted to travel narrative ("armchair travel") might be trying to subsist on low-paying run-of-network ads and Amazon.com links. A cooking magazine that caters to the upscale "lifestyle" crowd can earn a lot of money fom ads, while a cooking magazine that caters to people who live on homegrown vegetables and roadkill will be lucky to sell any ads at all.