Nick Denton ran a game on freelance writer Greg Lindsay recently, resulting in a big Business 2.0 story that made him out to be clever, when he was just trying to be honest. (Denton image from Microcontent News.)

Honestly, no one has really figured out how to profit from blogging. Not Nick Denton. Not his so-called arch-rival, Jason Calacanis. Certainly not Corante's Hylton Joliffe. Oh, and by the way certainly, certainly not yours truly.

So let me repeat the key Clue one more time, because it's at the heart of the preconceptions Lindsay brought to his story.

Blogging is not journalism.

You can do journalism through blogging, just as you can do journalism with a TV or radio signal. But TV isn't journalism, and neither is blogging.

Blogging is instant publishing. It's a way for any type of file -- text, graphics, objects -- to become accessible, even attractive, from a Web interface.

Blogging, in fact, isn't designed as a writing tool at all. It's a groupware tool. Sign up the members of your workgroup as a blog, post your shared work product, limit access to those who need it -- instant groupware.

What Denton, Calacanis, Joliffe, and all the rest of us are forgetting is that, while blogging enables journalism, blogging doesn't bring journalism's business model with it. Just because the out-of-pocket (as opposed to labor) costs are nil doesn't mean there's cash flow to fill that gap, let alone provide a profit.

Once you get the Clue, however, you're going to find something amazing happen. Suddenly, it will dawn on you that blogging is the metaphor by which any Web site can be created. And the lessons of Denton -- short, attitude-filled posts, leading people inside -- these can be applied by any Web site using that metaphor.

LLBean.Com could be a blog. The blog would lead people in, it would be constantly changing, pointing people to other resources (OK, in a store you open new windows -- many blogs do), building a community of interest around each product, letting your customers provide customer service to each other. The blogging metaphor would make the whole site easier to update, and since it would conform to common standards, it could be based on easy-to-buy software, which many people could be trained to use quickly.

Capische? Magazines are printed on paper, but printing isn't journalism. It's only journalism when the printed product is created as journalism, sold as journalism, is treated as journalism by the audience, and offers a business model in which journalism can happen.

Now, if you want someone who understands this and can help you do some real business, drop me a line and we'll talk.