You're (Probably) Not Going To Be a Pro Blogger

ThousandStars writes "Contrary to what the specious Wall Street Journal article Early Transition to Blog Pro says, You're Not Going to be a Professional Blogger argues that not that many people can make money through web advertising. The WSJ article 'doesn't discuss how people actually use their blogs to make money, which is by selling ancillary services.'"

Comments

Wake me up when..

[fictionpuss]

..web advertising rates have risen to the point where they accurately reflect the value they can provide clients rather than being bogged down by the dinosaur media forms of print and tv commanding increasingly outdated and thus artificially inflated prices.

Until we wake up to the future, we'll still be uselessly dreaming of the past.

Re:Yep

[Jason Levine]

"Secret Money Machine"? He writes a book on how to make money, sells it, and makes money? Is his book only one page with the following typed on it: "Write and sell a book describing how people can make lots of money."

Do it out of love first

[Tablizer]

I've kicked around the prospects of making mula from blogging before. Generally it's not worth it. Blog for love of the subject, and if it eventually clicks with an audience, THEN consider the mula aspect.

Isn't this kind of obvious?

[gubers33]

At least I think it is. Writing is like any other talent that millions of people can do, but not all can do well. Those few who can do their talent extremely well get paid for it. It is just like sports. Millions of kids play little league, but only a few thousand play minor league or college ball, and only a smaller few play in the MLB. Compare this to writing blogs, millions do it, a few thousands have blogs with some advertising and a smaller few get paid big bucks to do it professionally.

Re:More to the point, who wants to do so?

[CRCulver]

Blogging professionally would involve a tremendous amount of stress as if every post isn't just perfect, readership, and hence profit, will suffer.

I'm not sure this is the case. Certainly with a lot of popular political blogs (I'm thinking especially of Little Green Footballs here, but there are many others), the proprietors spent a lot of time expressing their bold individual viewpoint six or seven years ago, but now that they've made it big, they seem to just be phoning it in. In fact, I notice that a lot of their posts nowadays start with "Reader X alerted me to this article" followed by a simple copy and paste of something published in the traditional media. It doesn't look like readership has suffered, because the amount of comments on each story has only been going up.

Re:Um, news?

[WheelDweller]

I'm with ya, guy; *if* you can provide content, you've got to find that balance that provides a sample for the unitiated to try, while keeping your heavy-mover content protected, more or less. It's a balancing act most don't have the strength or maturity to achieve.

But long before that...content. Remember the sexually-ambiguous guy screaming "Leave Brittany Alone!"? That's not actually content. Whining, peeing, sleeping, talking about computers while drunk...those are all bodily functions, not entertainment. Most blogs, speaking statistically, wind up more like diary entries than anything, and rarely does that count, either.

Nothing has changed

[sqrt(2)]

To be a "professional blogger," which is really just a professional writer who publishes on the internet, you have to already be interesting and well known enough to attract readers or start from nothing and prove that you are interesting and talented enough to be worth reading. Then you can either sell ad space/content from your own site or get hired to write for someone else. Both of those scenarios are possible and there are examples of each. Writing is just like any form of artistic expression. The majority of people simply aren't good enough at it to make enough money to survive without also having another source of income. Even many who are talented don't get enough recognition to allow them to quit their day job.

But I think that is missing the point entirely. I suspect the vast majority of people who blog aren't doing it to make money and they never hope to. Blogging is essentially free, and at that price point there are plenty of voices that are worth checking out that wouldn't be worthwhile at any other price point, and maybe some of those people will even mature into successful writers in the traditional sense.

So yeah, you probably won't ever be a professional blogger, or novelist, or painter, or musician but that doesn't stop people from enjoying those creative outlets for their own sake.

Conflict of interest

[MrNougat]

Wouldn't it be in the best interest of someone who makes money at their blog to dissuade people from becoming competition? Perhaps by writing a blog about how difficult it is to make money at blogging, regardless of what the Wall Street Journal says?

Blogs!? What the hell?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Weblogs? Are we still talking about those? What is this, 2003? Honestly that's what I thought when I saw the article summary. MAKE.MONEY.FAST with your blog!