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Maybe I Will Stick With My Day Job

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cube-farm 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.

no-hateNext 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.

I love using Ben Golub pictures in my articles! 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.

Blogging For Dummies
by Susannah Gardner, Shane Birley

Read more about this book…
On Writing
by Stephen King

Read more about this book…

posted June 16th, 2008 in Opinion, Related | Tags: , , , , , , ,

  • Sorry about not getting you the shirt yet. We still have a ton of shirts to send out and I'll have to dedicate a Saturday afternoon soon to getting that taken care of.

    I think we're having a second line of shirts coming from our friends at StartupSchwag.com so I'll see if I can send two your way.
  • I was mostly kidding, Daniel! True, I was envious of Ben Golub and his stylin' shirt, but still. Very cool!

    Please let me know if you need my mailing address, and thanks!
  • You have to want to help people to be successful in blogging. I don't read blogs for entertainment, I read to learn. If you are teaching someone or giving us something you just learned, an audience of loyal readers will form quickly. Of course the business side comes with time. This is not a get rich scheme as Louis said. Plus you have to have a Background in what you write about. When you add up all these things, I do believe oppurtunity can knock on your door in the form of blogging. Just keep you door open :)
  • Great advice! That's basically why I started this blog.. I wanted to try to make the insane machinations of the social media community more understandable to a more casual or more busy internet-savvy audience. I actually have to remind myself when I write a review article to not get carried away with buzzwords and jargon that really means nothing to the average Joe.

    That reminds me, I need to write more review posts.
  • CyndyA
    I'm not sure I agree. I wonder sometimes if the days of paid bloggers aren't numbered. There is a clamor for free content growing louder and louder, and the advertising model of revenue can't support everything out there. If musicians have a hard time getting money because people believe that content should be free, what will happen to those of us who make money blogging?
  • The money is there, even from the younger set we thing grew up with a lot of stuff being free. Take a look at open source -- the OS is free, but support isn't. A browser is free, but if you want it customized for your company, be prepared to pay.

    This sideband monetization can be applied to a lot of different industries, actually, and it really frustrates me that the big record labels haven't figured it out yet. They should understand that the days of buying music or movies on hard media, and only allowing revokable or viewing rights are coming to and end. Why not take the market by surprise, say, "OK, it's all free, enjoy!" and then be ready when that same audience wants collectors editions of albums, artwork, concert tours, T-shirts, exclusive web community access.. bla bla bla.

    Anyway, business will go on, IMO. Just not in the way it is now. And I think this has always been true.
  • I completely empathize with your frustration here. I read an article recently in a fashion magazine, no less, (while waiting for a haircut... I don't partake otherwise) that pointed out the real "rich" people now are not those with the most money or stuff, but those who have the most _free time_ because they don't have to waste it doing drudgery to pay the bills. Maybe it's not so much that you want to blog "working from home" for a living, you just want to blog and not worry about where the mortgage payment is coming from.

    I think you (and I both) need to take a serious clue from the "4 Hour Work Week". The only way to make money doing what you love is to do what you love and have the money make itself. Wish it were that easy!
  • I read the 4-Hour Work Week. I think it's brilliant. I also know I am completely unsuited to do the necessary things that Tim Ellis did to get to where he is. Oh, it's a great dream, but I am, perhaps genetically, a nose-to-the-grindstone sort of guy.

    I know many people who work hard to be lazy though. And I actually admire their ability to be that way.
  • Part of getting more visible is being more visible to those people who like you and also those who don't. It's part of the landscape. How you handle, respond to, or ignore, criticism or name calling is important, especially if you can remember why it is you blog in the first place, for you and your readers.

    Part of the reason blogging for a living sounds like this perfect situation is because just about all of us would love to get paid for what's really a hobby. I drew a lot of flack for saying in April that most bloggers *don't deserve any* ad revenue, and while my stance was undeniably at the edge, I was trying to reset expectations about what it is to add value, and what they can expect to bring in.

    If somebody paid me enough to go watch baseball games all day, I'd do it. If somebody paid me enough to play Wii all day, I'd probably do it. But until there's a major economic shift where the world needs more people watching baseball, or more people blogging, and they're willing to pay for it, I imagine my situation won't change.
  • As always your advice is undeniable. Thanks.
  • I'll follow up with words from John Wayne to Barbara Walters: "Don't let the bastards get you down." There have always been bullies and cranky "critics" and people fueled by general meanness and depression and personal frustration, and the internet just makes it easier for those people to speak up. Most of them are just noise, so don't listen. I like Warren Buffett's response to people who try to tell him what to do: "'I love painting my own painting. I come down to the office, I get on my back, and I start painting. And I think I'm in the Sistine Chapel. It's my painting. Now, if somebody says, 'Use more red paint instead of blue. Paint a seascape instead of a landscape,' I would hand them the brush in five seconds and I'd say - I'd say a few other things, too - but I'd say, 'Do your own painting. I'll go paint what I want to paint.'": http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/news/companies/Buffet_Q_A_at_Wharton.fortune/index.htm
  • Man, it's too bad Warren Buffett is gone. He was a die-hard realist and amazing salt-of-the-earth sort of character even when he was worth billions. And then, he shrugged and gave those billions to good causes.

    More respect I could not have for a single individual.
  • CyndyA
    Oh, you poor thing! Don't get me wrong; I love my job, but I don't plan on doing this forever. Unless you are working at McDonald's, odds are your day job is ultimately better and pays more than problogging. I hear rumors about people who make the big money, like Valleywag, but the reality is that I made way more money as a developer 10 years ago than I make now.

    I love writing, and I think it's something I'm reasonably good at, and it lets me stay home with my kids while still bringing in an income. With four kids, daycare cancels out just about anything I could go back to doing without going back to school. There are downsides to every job, but the dream that probloggers sit around in sweats at their local Starbucks sipping lattes while pulling down a six-figure income and glorious praise is just that... a dream.
  • Do you know why I have a Google Adword ad on my site? It certainly isn't for income, because I think I've gotten a grand total of a dollar from that ad slot since I started running it.

    No, I debated having no ads, but I decided, people who are used to visiting blogs expect an ad, their eyes are blind to it, or they have a blocking plugin. The ad is there mostly as a "this space reserved", in case someone wants to discuss an affiliate spot or my wife wants to advertise her business there.

    In the mean time, it gives me a hearty laugh and a dose of realism when I go to my adwords campain stats and see that, most days, I get a single cent or less on an ad that serves thousands of impressions.
  • Nice photo; is that the second time I've been featured in one of your blog posts? Maybe I should give up development and start modeling?
  • You need to charge royalties, Benjamin!! ;)

    Nice post, definitely keep your day job. Blog for fun, fame and fortune will come if it's going to come, but till then you gotta do it for the love! And besides, there's other ways to arrange life so you work from home that aren't blogging. :)
  • Yep, second time. As long as your pictures keep coming up on compfight and fit the subject matter, I'll keep using them. It's a happy coincidence that you have your creative commons set and I use compfight for source images. Well, and that we know each other via the internet.
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