Now that I am working on compiling a list of all the probloggers in the world, I have been getting questions in regards to “what is a problogger?”

A problogger is someone that makes an income from blogging. This income could be a few dollars a month, all the way up to generating a steady income to support a family. People like Darren Rowse and John Chow are people we normally associate with probloggers but they are special examples, and not the more general reality of problogging.

If your goal is to pay for your internet connection every month, and you make that goal, in my mind, you are a problogger. Your efforts in regards to blogging are generating income that is paying for a goal you have.

For my World Problogger List, you don’t have to be a full time problogger, but I do ask that you only apply to have you name listed if you make a fair income from blogging. If I added every person that made more than ten cents to the list, my fingers would fall off.

Again, if you want to be added, I ask that you send your full name, blog URL, and location through to me via the comments on this and other World Problogger List posts, or through the contact page.

Originally posted on September 22, 2007 @ 4:27 pm

One thing that I have been wanting to do for a while now is create a list of the world’s probloggers. If you have made your living online through producing content for a blog, I want to hear about it, and add you to the list I am creating.

The list will be hosted on the Problogger page of the Million Dollar Wiki. I bought a page for this purpose. I think it will be a fun project to take on, and other than the list of Probloggers and their sites, I hope to list some great blogging resources for people wanting to get to the point in their blogging career to join the list.

So if you would like to be added to the list, please comment on this post, or head on over to the contact page, and let me know your name, your blog URL, and where you are in the world.

Originally posted on September 21, 2007 @ 10:35 pm

First off, I want to say that I mainly have blogged for a blog network, and for the most part, it has worked really great for me over the last two years. I also have seen many people doing very well in blog networks, but it their success makes me wonder: couldn’t they have done it on their own?

I watch as certain bloggers make a name for themselves and while I don’t think that any blog should necessarily be one hundred percent a one man show, I do think that selling all your best content to a network might be setting yourself up for failure later on.

A Scenario

Let’s say you join a network that promises you the world, and you are an amazing writer. They give you a platform and say they are going to deal with all the advertising revenue, server considerations, and design. All you have to do is give them your best content, and they swear that you can make some serious money.

Six months later, you have done hundreds of posts, and really put all your time, energy and passion into the site, but you still aren’t reaping many rewards. The blog network you work for hasn’t helped you promote your stories to social networks, nor have they worked on forming advertising relationships with anyone besides just slapping up some Google AdSense.

They begin to complain that the traffic you are bringing in, which is quickly closing in on the fifty thousand uniques a month mark, isn’t even making them enough to keep you on staff and they are going to have to let you go.

Does that really seem fair? If you didn’t claim some form of ownership on your content, or have some form of long term agreement about its use once you are no longer with the blog network, they now own your content forever, and while they can continue to put advertising around it and earn some money from it, you now have to find a new site to work on to replace the income you were getting.

Had you worked on your own blog, and committed yourself to learning about search engine optimization, link baiting, advertising, affiliate programs, and made connections, you might have produced less content, but made more revenue in the long run, and kept control over all of your great writing.

Networks Do Have Benefits

For many bloggers, having a network does have benefits. Maybe you are a great writer, but not good with technology. Maybe you are a great teacher, but can’t wrap your head around domains and hosting? Some networks can help you fill in the gaps you have in regards to your expertise online.

However, I think that if you really want to be a success online, you have to take the time to learn things, even if you don’t like them or don’t have any natural talents or abilities with them. It will stand you in good stead, and if your goal is to make a long term living off of your blogging efforts, wouldn’t you rather your future be in your own hands?

Why am I in a Blog Network?

So hopefully by now you are wondering why I work for a blog network if it is so terrible?

When I first started blogging, I never imagined that I could make a full time income from my work. I had just lost a job, and was working selling computers at a big box retailer. I didn’t have any sales talent, and really should have been working in the repairs department, but either way, I wasn’t making much over minimum wage.

I scored a spot on Darren Rowse’s Laptop related blog as a guest writer, and that in conjunction of interviewing Jacob Gower, my best boss ever, I secured a spot as a full time blogger for his network of sites.

Had I known then, all the things that I know now. I don’t know if I still would have chosen that route, but what I do know is that sometimes I find it a shame that I have built up the traffic and profile of sites that I will never own.

Other Considerations

Selling – Something that most bloggers don’t think about when writing for a network is the buying and selling of sites. The site you write on today could be sold out from under you tomorrow. I’ve watched as a whole niche I was working hard to write on was sold from under me.

Thankfully, I had many other projects that needed my attention, and so I shifted my focus, but had that been my only project, my only passion, and thusly, the only blogs for me to write on, then what would have happened?

Lack of Control – Say you want to build up the number one site dedicated to a specific subject, but the site is part of a network, and thus it will never truly be yours. The owners can have you talk about websites, services, and other things, telling you to review them in a manner you don’t agree with. They pay for your time, and they expect you to deliver.

This can happen on sites because the owners want to make more money, and if your site is strong in its niche, they can capitalize on that and fill their pockets, while reducing your writer’s integrity.

Other Writers – Nothing can reduce your enjoyment than sharing the spotlight with someone else, long after you have worked hard to build up a name for yourself and since you don’t own the site, they have every right to add new writers to the mix. This can be especially difficult if you don’t see eye to eye on things.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article helps you see how disadvantageous it can sometimes be to work for a blog network, and as such I hope you will give it much more consideration before jumping towards what might be a short sighted goal that could later leave you having to start over.

Originally posted on September 18, 2007 @ 1:48 pm

There are many routes to the goal of being a problogger. To me a problogger is someone that can pay his way in the world from his efforts in blogging. Under this definition, I am a problogger. I work for Bloggy Network doing various things including blogging, though that has become less and less part of my daily job.

What I wanted to point out with this article though are some failures on the part of people that want to be probloggers.

Don’t Undervalue Your Time

One of the biggest mistakes that I see people making is that they don’t put enough value in their time. Writing articles takes time, especially if you want to create quality content. Especially, when you are going to be working for anyone else, you will want to figure out what your per hour wage is going to be. If you are doing twenty-one posts a month for twenty-one dollars, and each post takes you twenty minutes. You will be making three dollars an hour.

You can’t think of your per hour rates when you are working on building up your own blog or blogs, but you still have to find value in your time. You can’t just give all of yourself to your writing without getting something back in return.

Currently, with this site, my return on investment is traffic. If I hit certain goals in my traffic, I feel as though writing here is time well spent.

Realistic Goals

So many bloggers think that if they set up a blog that it will only take them a few months before they are earning a full time wage off their blog, and while this has happened to some people, it is the exception, not the rule. Most bloggers that get to the full time income level are able to leverage something else. Maybe they had a fair bit of celebrity, money, or a product, but there is something that set them apart from the rest of the blogosphere, but for every success, there are thousands of failures.

I have witnessed many blogs that I thought were amazing in concept, dry up and disappear only half a year later, as the writer wasn’t getting the kind of income he expected for his efforts.

You have to set realistic goals, and the only way you can do that is to research the business behind blogging, which brings me to my next point.

Lack of Research

So many bloggers throw up a site, not checking to see if there is any major competition in their niche, or how much competition they will have to fight against. Most don’t even research the blogging tools they will use. They settle on Blogger, WordPress, or Typepad. They have no idea what it takes to really make a business from blogging.

I have seen bloggers amazed at a blog that gets twenty unique visitors a day because they don’t understand how much traffic a blog needs to be successful.

Take your time, check out all the great resources online about making money from blogging. Also, making sure to listen and learn before you leap into such a huge community, will help you get off on the right foot.

Some sites I have been part of took two months to organize, research and prepare before launching the blog, and you would be amazed to see how fast and high its traffic continued to double.

Conclusion

With a little common sense, preparation, research and realistic goals, I do believe that anyone can get to the point where their blogging is making them enough income that they can live off their efforts. When it comes to blogging, it is better to do it right the first time, or else you will be lost in the noise that is your competition.

Originally posted on September 10, 2007 @ 7:08 pm

Bryan Clark has put up a post entitled “Why I Want To Be A Full Time Blogger“, and in it he describes why he wants to be a full time blogger. I just wanted to go over his points and point out a few things as I think he is a little naive about what it means to be a problogger.

1. I love to write – When writing is a hobby, and something you do for fun, of course you love it, but once your income depends on it, and there is no money for food because you haven’t been in a writing mood, then tell me how much you love writing.

2. Sense of community – Say something wrong? Believe something different? Prepare to be chastised for it. The masses can quickly turn on you, and the community you were hoping for becomes a lynch mod that wants your head on a spear.

3. Meeting new people – Who? Where? When? I have been blogging full time for two years now, and while I have talked to people online, I have met very few people through blogging. Blogging actually takes so much time and secludes you from the rest of the world. You won’t be meeting new people, unless they are on an instant messaging client or respond to your comments on their blog.

4. No ceiling on how far I can go – He is right in that there is no limit, except the one you put on yourself, but making John Chow or Darren Rowse cash is very difficult, and everything has to come together perfectly for this to happen. I have been working full time for two years now, and while I make enough to pay the bills, I am not even close to making the highly sought after “big bucks”.

5. Money – This goes along with the previous point. Did I mention that for my first year, I worked for pennies? Well, that’s what you can expect for a fair bit of time unless you are highly creative, passionate, well connected, and “get” all the intricacies of the blogosphere.

6. Creative freedom – Unless you work with a blog network. You might be able to select your topic(s), but don’t expect them to just leave you to it. They are running a business and will expect certain things, and honestly, if you want to make it big with blogging, learn to link bait. It might not always be fun to write, but it works at boosting a site’s profile.

7. Freedom – Setting your own hours doesn’t really happen for some full time bloggers. You work on blogging from when you wake up to when you go to bed, especially if you want to make it big. Working for a network that gives you more money based on revenue share? Prepare to spend all your time writing posts, researching to write more posts, and editing pictures to draw attention to your posts. Blogging for real, life living wages means putting in long hours.

8. I’m my own boss – Being your own boss sounds great, right? Well, do you like accounting, advertising, server administration, dealing with backups, spam, taxes, invoices, computer failures, and information overload? Well, as your own boss, you have to be very good at a variety of different things, and they all can take away from blogging time. As your own boss, you actually have to be much harder on yourself than any other boss has ever been, so don’t expect a cakewalk.

Originally posted on September 6, 2007 @ 7:56 pm