We here at TNG know that our site comes from humble beginnings: three guys, one shared idea, and a free Blogger site. But what the last 6 months has told us is that we’re tapping into an unmet need. We are currently getting visits from around 150 different visitors (computers) daily, and that’s a great start. We’ve also started to experience some growing pains, including wanting more out of our site than Blogger can offer. But as you know, you get what you pay for, and we ain’t payin’ nuthin’. And if we want a better site, we’re probably going to have to pay for it.

Fully aware of this, and without lots of excess profit from my job as a civil servant, I started looking into other ways for TNG to earn some revenue. Of course, one way is through ads. While doing some research on web advertising, I stumbled upon a site called “Blogads Gay” which is a brokerage house between advertisers and bloggers wishing to earn ad revenue. Quickly after arriving at their site, I stumbled upon a listing of the gay blogs available for an advertiser to put banners on. Finally, I’d found it: a map of the gay blogosphere…

Each blog selling space listed its URL, it’s price, and the number of banners currently running. At the top of the list, of course, were Perez Hilton and Towleroad. But below those were a bevy of unexplored junk I’d never seen before. I was fascinated, captivated, and disgusted. So much so, that I felt the need to take an inventory. I cataloged 61 different gay blogs, and visited each one at least long enough to figure out what the “category” of the blog was. (And for some sites, that was far too long… either due to the sheer pain caused by the blogs’ layouts and color schemes, or the fact that it was nearly impossible to figure out what the hell the blogger was up to.)

I have to say, it wasn’t all crap. I was happy to discover that 20% of the sites I visited were activism- or politics-related blogs. There was a blog about queer representation in mainstream cinema, a good music blog that featured lots of free MP3 downloads, a few good news sites, and even a site about the news media. Perhaps one of the most interesting sites was that of a queer, Buddhist, vegetarian black man living with his husband and son in Suburban Maryland. You’ll notice that all of these sites of note fall into the Other category. Sadly, the bulk of the remaining sites were just barf-worthy.

Now, I doubt that the sample I’ve chosen is necessarily representative of the entire queer blogosphere. (In fact, all the blogs were male-oriented!) I only ended up on sites that advertise via Blogads Gay. I also excluded any sites that hadn’t been updated in the past week or had ceased to operate. It was actually interesting how many of the sites I had pulled up had just unceremoniously stopped operating, with final posts containing simply “Done. Done. Done.” or other cold closing remarks.

I wonder how many TNG readers read other gay-oriented blogs, and what categories of blogs interest them. I would think that our readers would be more likely to read DCist, BYT, The City Paper’s City Desk blog, or Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish. Perhaps Pam’s House Blend, Huffington Post, or Gawker? What else do you do to waste time at work?

Below is a categorized list of sites visited for this study.

Activism & Politics

Celeb Gossip

Fashion & Models

Jerk-off Material

Other

Personal

Random Crap