FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver signs a $700,000 book deal with Penguin. When people ask me if they can make money blogging, the answer is usually a qualified “maybe” — it’s possible, but hard to make a living. But there are real opportunities to turn a blog into real money through other means — like a book deal, or like speeches and appearances. Those won’t work for every journalist, of course — but viewing one’s blog as both an outlet for journalism and a branding tool can lead to good things happening.

(And while, to my knowledge, no figures have been made public, I’m sure Nate made a decent amount from advertising on FiveThirtyEight down the campaign stretch — not to mention whatever fees he may have wrangled for appearing on MSNBC or HDNet every five minutes.)