I’m Blogging This!
There are a lot of opinions out there about what makes a blogger different from a writer, or even a columnist. Bloggers seem to be in their own category according to everyone who writes (either for a living or for the love of it) and is not actually a blogger themselves.
Writer Wannabe’s
In fact, even bloggers don’t often like referring to themselves collectively as bloggers. It’s almost too easy to say, he’s not a writer.. he’s a blogger. As if blogging did not call upon the same internal resources as writing. You could argue the long form, of course… most bloggers will never write a novel by themselves, nor are they especially motivated to.
However, even journalists who write for newspapers or online trade mags and journals tend to look down upon bloggers. Sure, there are differences to how a journalist and a blogger operates. For one thing, a journalist has a copy editor and a deadline. They have to cite sources. They write for pay, and often need to try to stay unbiased, because otherwise what they are writing is called an editorial.
Blogging for Fun and Profit
But blogging isn’t just about writing whatever the hell you want on your own little piece of internet real estate. Sure, that’s a perk, but the trade-off is that most of us don’t get paid. If you want to make blogging in to a business (also often called monetization), you have to make some fairly dramatic changes to your approach and motivation behind what you blog and why.
For one thing, you have to put on a lot more hats. If you look at your standard book or even newspaper or magazine column writer, they prefer to stay on the cerebral or creative end of things, allowing publicists and established media channels promote their stuff for them. Of course, like most things there are a thousand unknown writers out there for every famous one, but the promotional vehicles and channels have been there for scores of years already, and exist to allow the writer to write.
This is not true in the case of blogging.. it’s a new field, in a new ball park. Bloggers have to work to be recognized for every part of their art, the writing, the promotion, the recognition. There are no book tours for bloggers. There is no talk show circuit for the most part. Bloggers are having to re-invent all of that stuff from scratch in order to be acknowledged and, in a word, paid.
That means that bloggers are not just writers. They are marketers, too. And networkers, social connectors. They are new technology mavens and visionaries, pundits and critics all rolled in to one very tired body. The cost of admission is low and dropping, but the price for success is staggeringly high.
Just Say .. Yes?
Does this mean a blogger should throw in their hat and go home? No, not necessarily, but you should be at least acquainted with the realities of being a blogger, and the boulders that lie in the road to success.
For example, even when you get a bit of recognition, you have to deal with a ton of people who think you will work for free. Just read Michelle Greer’s take on it. If you put yourself through 8 years of medical school and become a doctor, do people start calling you and asking for free surgery? Most likely not. If work your way up to the senior editor’s desk at the New York Times, do you decide to spend half of your day doing work for free? Hardly.
And yet, along with being constantly reminded that bloggers aren’t actually writers, even when they get a nut they suddenly are expected to share that nut with everyone.
And the Moral Is…
You got me. I have no moral in this tale. The ending hasn’t been written. As I said, we are paving the path, burning the channels that will help bloggers and writers (and I am firmly of the opinion that bloggers by and large ARE writers, just as some writers are great and others suck, so also are bloggers). I think the momentum is there for bloggers to make their own media channels, via podcasts, new TV, web radio, RSS and other technologies, to become legitimate.
And perhaps, turn Whuffie into something real!