If my previous post about quitting blogging was enough to make you want to go and jump off the nearest bridge, take heart, because this proves it is possible to make a living out of blogging - and then some.

Michael Arrington set up TechCrunch - a blog about Internet startups in silicon valley - just two years ago. Now, as SF Gate reports, it’s pulling in $240,000 a month in ad revenue and employing eight people. That’s not bad going for something that started as a hobby.

Yet there’s something that bothers me from the article:

TechCrunch illustrates the new blogging math. It sells sponsorships that allow advertisers to display on the home page at $10,000 per month. It also uses Federated Media to sell display ads, keeping 60 percent of the revenue. And it charges $200 to list in its Cool Jobs section, getting about five or six want ads per day.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume for a second that all the ads on TechCrunch are sold through Federated Media. That would mean FM are taking $160,000 a month from TechCrunch for selling a few ads.

Now call me old fashioned, but if it was me, I think I’d be hiring my own ad sales team right about now, rather than paying someone else nearly $2million a year.

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