Can you really make any money blogging about Hoboken?

If you're the type who has an insatiable appetite for alternative takes on Hoboken culture, you have remarkable luck. The community is swarming with blogs whose operators opine on various aspects of the Hoboken experience: from raising kids in the Mile Square to dissecting local politics on a molecular level.

While some of these community blogs have demonstrated some real staying power, many have sprouted up in the last year or so. Some are updated with surprising frequency and feature ritzy designs that include various types of advertisements.

That may leave you wondering whether any of these bloggers are actually making money. If they do make money, how so? And if they aren't making money, do they have day jobs? How do they have time to feed their daily beasts with such frequent reports, editorials, pictures, and polls? And what can you expect if you're contemplating getting off the bench and into the Hoboken blogging game?

Over the last decade, several blogs have come and gone—Hoboken.com, which is totally defunct and offline, and Hobokeni, which is still online but hasn't been updated in about two years, are two of the most prominent casualties. But, at least, one blog has endured for more than half a decade. Former Hobokeni chat room moderator Sean Iaquinto operates one of the oldest active blogs: Philly2Hoboken.

Iaquinto's inaugural post was made in October 2004, and he said Philly2Hoboken, a Movable Type blog, was an outgrowth of grieving the death of his father. The blog wasn't conceived as a money making venture, he said, but as an exercise in "self understanding and writing, warts and all, about my experiences and life while living in Hoboken."

Iaquinto, a network engineer for a financial information firm who moved to Hoboken from the Philadelphia area in 1994, often blogs introspective personal musings about different aspects of life in Hoboken, along with material that occasionally skews political, such as his entry about the municipal swimming pool and these recent open letters.

A few weeks ago, nearing his blog's sixth anniversary, Iaquinto began experimenting with an ad for Zipcar, which he said has yet to generate any revenue. Iaquinto uses Google Analytics to measure the blog's web traffic and said that last month, Philly2Hoboken received 1,831 unique visitors and 4,200 page views. He said the blog averages about 140 visitors per day and that he devotes about two hours per week to operating it.

Patch columnist Kathy Zucker launched the blog Hoboken Mom Condo Living on WordPress in January 2009. She said her blog averaged 1,100 unique monthly visitors and 30,000 monthly page views from January through July and she devotes about one hour per week to blogging. Zucker said she doesn't use the blog, which originally chronicled her and her husband's experience purchasing a condo in Hoboken and includes rather specific financial details, as a way to generate income directly. But, she said, "the blog raises my profile" and has helped her generate ancillary streams of revenue.

Zucker was able to parlay her blog-writing experience into a regular column on HobokenPatch, after the AOL-owned site launched in January and its editor Claire Moses approached her about writing for the site.

Zucker said her blog also helps to build and strengthen her brand. She's a marketing consultant that uses data and technology to develop marketing strategies for clients, which sometimes includes content writing, website redesign, and Facebook advertising. The blog has also helped her attract new clients. Zucker's clients have included Hoboken businesses Koko Fit Club and PromptMD.

"I love to write," said Michelle Lemieux about what inspired her to launch Hoboken Gal on WordPress in March 2009, after she and her husband lost their jobs.

She said she tries to avoid blogging about local politics, though she did write a post on her harrowing experience applying for the public information officer job at City Hall last year, and sticks to writing on social topics, like this recent post about Hoboken cabbies texting while driving.

Lemieux, who's lived in Hoboken for the last decade, said she doesn't solicit ads directly or from third parties, though Google Ads appear on her comment pages. And in her blog's sidebar, Lemieux provides a link to a Tenafly-based car dealership, which she described as "somebody that supports the work I do." Lemieux works full-time as an associate director of public relations for a global PR firm and also contributes to Examiner.com.

Perhaps the most urbane of the blogs is TheBokenOnline, launched on WordPress in July 2009 by Adam Lazzara and Brian and Kelly Pepe. TheBokenOnline was conceived as a restaurant and bar aggregation site, but the direction of its content has shifted in recent months to include more news and Hoboken culture.

According to Lazzara, traffic has been significant enough to compel local businesses to approach them about advertising on the blog. "We average right around 20,000 monthly visitors," said Lazzara. "Roughly half of those are unique visitors to our site."

Lazzara said he and his colleagues use OIO Publisher, a WordPress plugin, to manage TheBokenOnline's advertising and, according to this ad purchasing form, banner ad prices range from $50 to $100 for 30 to 34 days featured in a space on the blog. Lazzara and his colleagues also outsource some advertising to Google Ads, a popular third party advertising program among Hoboken bloggers.

Though he declined to discuss specific numbers, Lazzara said TheBokenOnline is profitable and he points to the low overhead of operating a blog as a chief reason why. Still, he and his colleagues all work full-time corporate day jobs. Among the three of them, the founders devote a total of 40 hours per week to the blog's maintenance and are aided by several writers and interns, Lazzara said.

If a little political skewering is more your speed, you may try Nancy Pincus's Grafix Avenger. Despite being the new kid on the block of politics-driven blogs, Pincus said Grafix Avenger, which launched on the Blogger platform in March, is already pulling some encouraging traffic numbers. According to StatCounter, the tool Pincus uses to measure web traffic, her blog received 29,393 page loads and 17,314 unique visitors since she began tracking in May.

Pincus, who sits on the Hoboken Zoning Board of Adjustment, said she is careful to refrain from blogging about zoning-related issues and describes her content as a medley of personal and political commentary that relies heavily on her graphic design skills.

"I don't do news or journalism," said Pincus. "I also do Photoshop graphics that run from satirical to illustrative. My blog is really a boutique site." She added that as of now, she doesn't use advertising. A recent post she said is typical of her style is this one, which pokes fun at political operative Paul Swibinski of Vision Media Marketing.

Similar to Pincus, Kurt Gardiner runs The Hoboken Journal with a mind toward providing political commentary and analysis. Gardiner, who blogs under the screen name Reformerus_Giganticus, launched The Hoboken Journal in November 2008 out of, he said, a sense of political advocacy. These days, he said, traffic has shown a constant upward trend and offers statistics on Histats and Sitemeter, which reveal an average of about 700 visits per day last week.

His content is mainly opinion-driven, patently pro-Zimmer and even features this interview with the mayor from just last month, an opportunity he said was offered to him by a member of the Zimmer administration.

Despite The Hoboken Journal's ample web traffic, Gardiner, who works as a project manager at a Manhattan-based insurance company, said he doesn't use local advertising because it "brings up conflict of interest issues." When asked whether he receives subsidies from government officials or anyone politically connected to government officials, he said he doesn't but acknowledges that he did donate money to Zimmer's most recent campaign.

Hoboken's oldest active blog is run by retired police captain and POG co-founder Ed Mecka, who launched his eponymous blog in 2003, while still on the force. Mecka, who uses a platform by Interspire that costs $200 per year, said the blog was started to bolster his run for a First Ward council seat in  2003, not to generate revenue.

Nevertheless, Mecka does use several means of generating revenue, including Google Ads and an ad for Airfairewatchdog. He also accepts donations but said he barely makes enough to offset the costs and time.

"Once in a while, I'll get a check in the mail for $100 [as a donation] from a local attorney or something," Mecka said. He added that he's "lucky" if he receives a $100 check from Google - the minimum amount of earnings paid out - every few months and has seen nothing from Airfarewatchdog. Mecka's material is mainly politics- and activism-driven, but he does offer some lifestyle content, such as the "Shrink For Men" feature.

He uses Google Analytics to measure web traffic and said his hits fluctuate dramatically depending on election cycles. Around election times, Mecka said his blog receives as many as 4,000 visits per day, and when things are slow politically, the hits bottom out around 100 per day. In the past, Mecka has spent as much as 25 hours per week blogging, but lately, he said, he has been putting in about ten hours a week.

Mile Square View was launched last year on Blogger by Roman Brice, a technical and financial consultant who writes under the nickname "SmartyJones" or "Da Horsey."

"The blog was started with the idea of giving back to Hoboken after [former Mayor Peter] Cammarano got arrested," said Brice, who uses Google Ads and the Amazon Associates program. Earlier this month, he sold his first advertising space to the local business EatDrinkHoboken, LLC.

Brice said he's made less than $1,000 from his Google advertisements thus far, nothing from the Amazon ads and declined to comment on how much he's earning from the EatDrinkHoboken banner at the top of his page. When asked whether he receives subsidies from politicians, he said, "Hell, no!"

"Last year, I asked my readers about even accepting political ads," said Brice, whose blog's content is largely pro-Zimmer. "They were against it, so I declined to accept any. [Fourth Ward Council candidate Tim] Occhipinti is sneaking in some small Google ads, but I'm not going to go out of my way to block those tiny ones," added Brice, noting that Google allows its partners to censor ads.

That brings us to the godfather of Hoboken blogs, the oft-maligned but ever-popular Hoboken411. Perry Klaussen launched Hoboken411 in April 2006 and it has since become the city's most visited, most influential blog since then. Several blogs imitate at least one or more of Klaussen's conventions.

Klaussen declined several interview requests for this story, but according to advertising rate information obtained by Patch, it's reasonable to believe that Klaussen is the only local blogger who is able to make a living—perhaps a quite comfortable one, too.

Patch spoke with a source who earlier this year inquired with Klaussen about purchasing ad space on Hoboken411. The individual, who asked to remain anonymous, shared with Patch the information Klaussen provided regarding ad space available for purchase. In a PDF he supplied to the source, Klaussen mapped out five different locations on the site where ads appear.

According to Klaussen's correspondence, rates for those five banners, which rotate with other advertisements, "range from $299-$499 per month" for which he guarantees at least 100,000 monthly impressions. Moreover, for an additional $100 fee, Klaussen will design a banner ad for advertisers who don't have one and he also offers a more expensive 300x60 pixel exclusive ad option. In addition to selling his own ad space, Klaussen farms out some advertising space to Google Ads and Amazon Associates.

It's hard to know exactly what type of web traffic Hoboken411 draws because web traffic analytics is still such an inexact science and Klaussen, the only one who knows Hoboken411's traffic statistics for sure, is notoriously guarded about sharing such details. In an entry dated August 27, Klaussen writes that Hoboken411 attracts "several million page views…each month," over 400,000 of which he claims, according to Google Analytics, were unique visitors.

However, Klaussen recently hid Hoboken411's traffic data on Quantcast, another web analytics company available online. The last time Patch checked Hoboken411's traffic stats when that information was available was on July 15 and, according to Quantcast's numbers, the blog was attracting just over 32,000 monthly unique visitors. Quantcast describes Hoboken411 as "popular among a younger, fairly wealthy, mostly male audience."

If Klaussen's self-reported traffic numbers are accurate and he sells all available ad space at—estimating conservatively—only the low end of his price range, it's possible he could be generating upwards of $100,000 per year blogging Hoboken.

For anyone thinking about jumping into the game, that kind of earning power may not be easily obtainable. As Zucker said, perhaps the best advice for bloggers to heed—those already in the game as well as those contemplating jumping in—is what she describes as "the number one rule of marketing: Do not undertake something unless you are 100 percent sure you can follow through on it."