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08

Jun

Blogging for money or about money

Posted by stuart as , , ,

I haven’t been around here much lately, but I have been keeping an eye on what’s been going on in the blogosphere in my feedreader.

I actually went and cleaned out the ol’ reader yesterday. I’ve gotten rid of all the blogs (except for a couple) which talk about blogging for money. Whilst the idea of blogging for money is a noble one, I reckon for most people, the concept of full time blogging is just swapping one job for another.

A few things which should probably be kept in mind whilst you’re building up your blog(s) in an effort to go “full time”:

  • There’s only so much social interaction you can get in blog comments. If you’re blogging full time, a lot of your time is going to be spent hunched over a keyboard. You miss out on the social interactions you would get in the workplace.
  • Your income can tend to be dependant on your output. What happens if you get sick or need time away? Can you afford to have your income drop?
  • You are at the mercy of so many factors beyond your control: What happens if your AdSense account gets cut? What happens if your main blog gets dropped by the Search Engines, or another blogger comes along in your field, who is just better than you? Is there room enough for both of you to make a living?

I wonder whether the time we spend building our blogs would be better spent trying to set up automated income streams which require little in the way of  input from us? Spreading our income across many different monetisation techniques in many different niches?

8 comments so far

gary says June 8th, 2007 at 5:59 pm

Good post. AIS is the way to go, I’ve been at it for just about 4 years. The osworld blog is an outlet for my thought and experiences about AIS ;)

45n5 says June 9th, 2007 at 1:37 am

“the concept of full time blogging is just swapping one job for another.”

isn’t it still a swap for the better?

“You are at the mercy of so many factors beyond your control: What happens if your AdSense account gets cut? What happens if your main blog gets dropped by the Search Engines, or another blogger comes along in your field, who is just better than you? Is there room enough for both of you to make a living?”

each one of those is an argument against ais also.

stuart says June 9th, 2007 at 3:08 am

Mark, you actually make good points, I guess it’s about diversification of both income sources and niches, right?

Gary, I’m just really dipping my toes in the waters of AIS at the moment, with affiliate marketing - so much to learn…..

45n5 says June 9th, 2007 at 3:48 am

I’m thinking more if you build something valuable with enough subscribers/users you become your own traffic source.

If I have 10,000 subscribers/users I can work with that regardless of what happens.

I haven’t done it yet, and could argue we haven’t really tried, but If I want to build things that weather the storms I’m going to need more valuable than the easily on/off search traffic.

Make Money Blogging says June 9th, 2007 at 6:43 am

Good points. I may sound dumb for asking, but what is AIS?

stuart says June 9th, 2007 at 6:55 am

Welcome Make Money Blogging! :-)
AIS is Automated Income Stream.

Something like a page you set up with AdSense on it, then forget about it, and it keeps bringing you in money, as opposed to a blog, which you have to keep adding fresh content to.

J.D. says June 10th, 2007 at 7:15 am

I’ve been looking at a few ways to automate news, or at least make it so there is very little editing required to put out some useful and pertinent content.

I don’t think I’d really feel positive about putting up yet another site that just posts the same old crap though…

stuart says June 10th, 2007 at 12:13 pm

Hi and welcome JD! :-)

There are many ways to automate content. A classic example of an extremely successful site is the Digital Photography Blog of a particularly successful pro blogger. Very little original content, mostly automated, but still extremely useful for the users and profitable for the owner.

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