With the Seattle PI in the middle of a 60-day deathspin, I end up talking to a lot of people about "the future of journalism" and neighborhood blogging. When they find out what I do -- work at a 'hood blogging startup while making my living as an honest-to-goodness neighborhood blogger -- they can't help but ask:

How much money does a neighborhood blogger make, anyhow?

Some of them, I assume, are wondering if this is the next thing for them. So, let's talk numbers.

I make six cents per person.

There you go. I answered. I make just over a buck for every 17 people I can get to visit my site, capitolhillseattle.com. (Sweet! There's another 54 cents.)

Here's how it breaks down over the last two months:

Visitors represents the number of unique visitors who came to my site according to my analytics service. $ represents the total revenue generated by showing ads to those visitors. And I've included the calculations eCPM and $/V(isitor) to give you a sense of what I earn per unit. eCPM is effective cost per thousand, or, basically, what it cost to buy 1,000 ad impressions on my site in the period.

Yup. I'm on pace to make $14k a year. Wait, where are you going? Come back. This really is the future of journalism. And I'm not done yet.

What I love about the $14k number is my main takeaway from journalism school at San Jose State University, home of the Spartan Daily. Most of the instructors were working or ex-working journalist-types themselves and were obsessed with telling us how awful our chosen career path would be. You'll have to call unhelpful flacks and you'll make $16k a year, they warned. They were right!

But that's not all. I don't even really make $14k. I pay into a pool to share ad revenue with people who contribute posts to the site further eroding my take.

Of course, money isn't everything. Yes, clicks are important too. Here's a look at the traffic growth I've had to achieve to generate those lofty financial results.

For you analytical types, you can learn as much as you want about my site on Quantcast's Capitolhillseattle.com Profile Page. Quantcast's "people" measure, you might have noted, differs from the unique visitor total I wrote about above. That's part of the fun of Web analytics -- they all count in different ways. And, oh yeah, that's also part of the fun of trying to explain your new neighborhood blogging business to potential advertisers.

More about this advertiser fun. In addition to producing enough content to keep more and more people coming back day after day, I also need to contact and convert new advertisers. I've already had about 60 advertisers come through the system since October. About 20 of them are active with me right now.

Which brings me to a significant factor in the equation -- everything else. I spend the rest of my time calling public information officers, scouring RSS feeds, listening to the police scanner and flitting from public meeting to public meeting. A fire call goes out, I'm right behind the responding engine and get to enjoy the scent of the burnt food that generated the 3-alarm response, a lot of smoke and no fire. But who wants a fire? Certainly not this neighborhood blogger (even though it will help my traffic).

So why am I doing this? For one, I've never had a more satisfying night of work than the night I was out covering Capitol Hill's election night celebrations. I'm finally making that $16k a year my j-profs prommised me and loving every minute of it. And I can see how things will continue to grow -- my best advertisers found me, independent journalism startup West Seattle Blog has demonstrated that a dedicated sales effort can yield results when tied to legitimate content, and we're improving Neighborlogs tools to make the effort to find and retain advertisers easier. For two, I also spend a big part of every day helping the Neighborlogs business fly. But let me be clear that I'm not just propping up my blog to make Neighborlogs look good -- I'm trying to build a real business that I own independently. Like the rest of Neighborlogs sites, CHS Capitol Hill Seattle is owned and operated by an independant content entrepreneur. In this case, me.

So, that's how much a 'hood blogger makes. We joke at Neighborlogs HQ each month when we're reviewing site revenue about doing promo shots with me holding a stack of money, decked out in bling. Text on the promo would read Gettin Rich. We joke. Wouldn't be funny if we didn't think this might just be a good way -- someday -- to make a living.