You already know there was a survey about bloggers recently that indicated that only about 8% cared about making money with their blogs - it was mentioned all over the place. When I read that stat, I sort of thought it was a lie and that most bloggers think the way I do - I don’t expect to get rich off this thing, nor do I expect to make a living off it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to. My expectations were that the folks surveyed said they don’t care about making money but were still desperately looking for any way to monetize their blogs, much the way the school nerd says he doesn’t care about being “cool” while he shops at the A&F store vainly hoping that will up his social stature.

Technorati recently updated their site and it’s now much cleaner and easier to navigate. For instance, I was never able to find the link to the “Top 100″ blogs until today (though I’m willing to bet it was prominently displayed right there on the homepage and my short attention span induced blindness missed it). What I found there was most interesting. The top 20 is dominated by some of the things you’d expect - culture blogs like Boing Boing, tech blogs like Gizmodo and the Google blog, etc. The organizational and time management blog 43 Folders lands in at number two, with Lifehacker falling in at number six - that was interesting.

Then there are the blogs about blogging and how to round up more readers - Gaping Void at seven and Micro Persuasion at five. They occassionally talk about monetizing that traffic, but their focus is fairly roundly in the marketing side of things, which appeals to the typical blogger’s egotistic need to spread their message (and lest you think I’m being perjorative there, most blogging is driven by a purely egotistical instinct to begin with and, quite honestly, that’s what makes it so interesting).

The one site arguably dedicated solely to helping you turn a profit from your ramblings is ProBlogger, which doesn’t pop up on the list until number 15. I’ve been reading ProBlogger for a while now so that I can begin monetizing some of the ideas I’ve been percolating in the back of my head. You may have already noticed some of the experiments on this very blog, which I use as my personal lab. The fact that this site falls below the top 10 would seem to vindicate the results in that survey. The higher rankings of the marketing blogs would seem to indicate that the reason most bloggers blog is ultimately to satisfy their own egos or, put in more positive terms, create their own micro communities driven solely by the things they enjoy and in which they have an interest.

While there’s a distinct satisfaction in receiving some monetary compensation for expressing your views and opinions, it seems more folks are driven by their web stats. I’m not alone in this. Though I literally don’t make a dime on this site, I check in on my web stats on a regular basis. In the last couple of days, for some reason I still haven’t quite figured out, the number of unique daily visitors to my site has increased by about 10%. Now, it’s true that I switched to WordPress, added the Sociable plugin that allows you to pass my posts on to Digg, del.icio.us and other sites, and began pinging a bunch of other blogs, but my stats don’t quite seem to reflect that those are where these new readers are coming from.

That’s beside the point, though - the point is that this little 10% bump is absolutely thrilling to me solely because I’m having a Sally Field moment over it - “They like me! They really, really like me!” Even though I’m still not making a dime off this site, the satisfaction this traffic bump is giving me more than makes up for that. It sort of surprises me. And, rather than trying to figure out ways to monetize that traffic, I’m interested in finding more ways to increase it. I find this whole ego motive over profit move thing to be confounding but fascinating. Feeding my bank account would provide me with some freedom, ensure my family survives and perhaps help me attain some status and luxuries I wouldn’t otherwise be able to attain. Feeding my ego makes me feel like a big man, but is totally selfish and ultimately useless. So why bother?

One other interesting and encouraging find in the Technorati lists are sites that emphasize a positive user experience. The venerable A List Apart falls in at 10 and is followed immediately by the inspiring Creating Passionate Users at 11. The fact that these two rate so highly could also be explained by ego driven blogging - after all, happier visitors equals repeat visits and better word of mouth - but it may also indicate that things aren’t all as self-centered as they seem. There’s a great thrill that also comes in knowing you made someone happy, providing a fun or interesting experience that generates a certain amount of passion from them. This is a trick the big companies - AOL, Dell, Comcast, Microsoft, etc. - could learn from the bloggers. Happy users create more happy users. And in the case of companies whose sole existence is based on monetizing users, an investment in better customer service and user experience today can easily translate into better, higher-quality sales tomorrow.