I was going to write an opinion piece tonight, inviting my readership provide feedback on the best tactics I could employ to start moving toward blogging as a profession. Apparently, the wait for someone to offer me riches in return for writing for their blog tactic I have been taking up until now hasn’t struck pay dirt.
With plenty of hubris, I was pleasantly dreaming of my easy entry into a work-from-home lifestyle, writing insightful, hard-hitting prose for a thankful employer and fawning audience. If only they saw in me that spark of brilliance that I would sound too egoistic to point out directly! I thought to myself. I perused my writings on my blog. Why couldn’t this be my job? I love it, I’m good at it.. perfect! .. right?
Wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. My daydream started to evaporate when I saw a discussion on the income potential of professional bloggers, spurred by this WinExtra article from Steven Hodson, which talks about the cost of the latest gadgets. That led to this Profy article written by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira, about the strange economy of silicon valley.
Strike one: bloggers often don’t get paid a lot, if at all, and the job can be a grind. Also, San Francisco is an alien world akin to the vacation planet in Star Trek.
Next up, I saw this Profy article on FriendFeed. In it, Cyndy recounts that a female blogger had quit her job due to heckling on the blog she was working for. While I agreed with the message of the article, I was saddened by the fact that this was a reality of being a quasi-famous pro blogger.
Around that time FriendFeed was getting warmed up on the topic of blog hecklers, and (although of course, now I can’t find it) there were several comments about extended periods of vitriol sustained by many of today’s more popular bloggers. And when I say extended, I’m talking months to years where bloggers had to ignore or put up with baseless accusation and peanut-gallery criticism while the blog owners dared not take a side in case they lost readership.
So that brings me up to this weekend. Steve Hodson is back, having written an impassioned article about testy grammar comments on a guest post he did for Mashable. His detractor then followed up with another patronizing comment.
Personally, I find Steve’s writing very readable, but then again I am not that careful about noting grammar inconsistencies, leaning more toward trying to glean what the article has to say, rather than how it is said.
I’ll just say this about grammar and sentence structure: Have you ever read a book by Stephen King?
If you have, you know that he has a rambling, descriptive writing style that plays fast and loose with all sorts of grammar and punctuation rules. Does anyone care? Absolutely not. In fact, if you took that away it would looks that essential something that makes the book a Stephen King book, and consequently, not very interesting to read.
Strike two: no matter what it pays, making it moderately big as a blogger means having to shrug off criticism and invective, whether it is true or not.
Recently, Louis Gray went to dinner with Daniel Ha, the founder and lead developer for the comment system back-end that I use on this blog, Disqus. Louis also uses Disqus on his blog.
Anyway, the next day, Louis took the time to write up what he could reveal from their discussion. It was a good read and it got me excited about where Disqus was headed.
Not everyone was as pleased as me.
Specifically, someone had called Louis out for not asking the hard questions to Daniel on Disqus, and subsequently stating that Louis’ article was a puff piece, and Louis was a sell-out and using his blog to promote his favorite causes.
It turns out this person is well-known in the blog world for having a modus operandi of basically scanning for a topic, and then writing a scathing article about some random quasi-famous blog in order to draw readership to his own blog.
Strike three: in the world of internets, negative attention can sometimes be as rewarding as positive attention. Some people know this, and they take advantage of it. You can never be sure of someone’s motivations for being critical, but somehow must accept the criticism nonetheless. Maddening.
I have to admit that this past week, with its focus on the seedy underbelly of the shiny blog beast, has rather tempered my enthusiasm to dive into the blogging business full-time.
I still think wistfully about being able to work from home, on my own schedule, and having each new entry be received with cheers and ovations, but for now, perhaps quietly working away in an air-conditioned cube for an employer that treats me with respect is a great place to be in.
PS – I’m still waiting for my Disqus shirt.
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Blogging For Dummies by Susannah Gardner, Shane Birley |
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On Writing by Stephen King |
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