Cheezhead

If you’re considering a social networking start-up, you might want to read a New York Times article entitled, “Popularity Might Not Be Enough.” (registration required)

That is, rather than seek venture financing and hire a staff, it may be better for one or two people to create a relatively simple site — say, a hobbyist blog for guitar enthusiasts — and use a service like Google AdSense to, hopefully, make enough money to live on.

But to make $50 million with a big staff-produced content-rich guitar site, sponsored by, say, Fender and Gibson, a site would have to generate more than 200 million page views a month, [Jeremy] Liew [a venture capitalist at Lightspeed Venture Partners] estimated.

Although the story focuses on social networking sites, I think it’s indicative of any niche Web business in the new landscape. Vertical search engines, for example, face a similar situation. Is the traffic there to support a business bringing in tens of millions of dollars? Probably not, unless you’re Google or another large property. I wrote about this earlier in the month with “Writing on Wall for Vertical Job Search Engines?”

However, the unfortunate reality may be that no matter how much the verticals provide a great service, pleasing the investors who have poured tens of millions into seeing big money probably are not all that pleased right about now.

For Jobster, who stays away from banner advertising altogether, the future becomes pretty fuzzy from the outside. Job seeker traffic is increasing but not being monetized. Can a networking model, like Jobster’s, be sustainable by employer dollars alone? Oh, wait, job postings are free.