“It’s a good time to be a publisher online,” said Carrie A. Johnson, an analyst with Forrester Research. “There’s a ridiculous thirst for advertising” on the Internet, she said. Online merchants paid 33 percent more for advertising last year than the year before, Ms. Johnson said, with costs expected to rise further.

So says today’s New York Times. We’ve known this for a while, of course, otherwise so many of us wouldn’t be beavering away 24/7 putting everything bar the kitchen stink up on the Web.

“For high-margin, big-ticket items, the competition for eyeballs is even more intense,” writes Bob Tedeschi, backing up Syntagma Media’s strategy of high-end, distinctive content properties.

“These big-ticket categories represent a large share of advertising on the Internet, including a big portion of the revenue base of Google and Yahoo, so it represents a large opportunity for us,” Robert N. Brisco, Internet Brands’ Chief Executive said.

“In years past we might have had to spend $1 million a year on photos,” said Jeremy Anwyl, president of Edmunds.com, a privately held auto research site. “Now, it might be $3 million, but traffic has quadrupled over the same period.”

Advertising revenue, Mr. Anwyl added, is growing even more quickly than traffic. He would not disclose specific sales, but he said that after growing about 50 percent annually over the past six years, sales this year would probably be double that of last year.

Still, Mr. Anwyl said, because Google can quickly point consumers to newer informational sites with innovative features, the company must continuously invest in new technologies as a defensive measure.

It is a good time to be a blog network, despite whispers of a major world economic downturn. In every recession, some parts of the economy buck the trend. Money doesn’t just disappear, it moves elsewhere. Who’s to say blog networks won’t be the next gold standard?