Category Archives: Problogging

Mistakes I’ve Made in My Career

One of the things I haven’t talked about often, but have meant to are the mistakes I’ve made in my career. Most people will avoid such things, and for good reason, but I think part of teaching others about blogging must be to highlight mistakes so that you can hopefully avoid them, and while many of my mistakes are only mistakes in hindsight, they are still worth noting.

Hopefully, this post will help you.

Darren Rowse and Bloggy Network

When first starting in blogging, I was given an opportunity by Darren Rowse to write on his laptops blog. After he came back from vacation, he offered me a part time position. Instead, I took a full time position with Bloggy Network.

Had I stayed with Darren part time, and taken a part time role with Bloggy Network, I probably could have made ends meet, given myself a fair bit of day to day variety, and maybe had even been one of the first full time employees of b5media.

Was this a mistake? I am not certain, but I’ve always wondered what my life would be like today had I gone that route. Even back then, Darren was a strong brand, and could have influenced my career in interesting ways.

Looking back at my situation at the time, I shouldn’t have been so quick to rush in to the first offer that was sent my way. I had tons of time, passion, and a fair bit of skill that I could have leveraged better.

More on Bloggy Network

After two years of working for Bloggy Network, I got a big complacent, as most people do. I thought too much of my value, and in doing so, I feel like I sealed my fate with that company. Don’t get me wrong, I was still producing great content, working on amazing things behind the scenes, but I wasn’t doing enough profit oriented tasks to remain one of the most valued assets of the company, and when time came to scale back, I was part of a deal in selling a variety of sites to Splashpress Media.

I should have done more as an employee to generate revenue, rather than taking on tasks that put me “behind the scenes”. I also should have pushed harder to stick to projects that gave me enjoyment, so I could leverage my passions. I was on quite a few projects that I didn’t agree with, or didn’t fully enjoy, and I think that was apparent to everyone involved.

Splashpress Media

I wasn’t too excited to be joining Splashpress as I had felt like I was being betrayed by Bloggy Network, a company I had been with since its inception, but I quickly adjusted to my new roles. Mark Saunders, Mr. Splashpress himself, once told me that he saw me climbing up the company ladder quite quickly, and that there were many things we could do together.

After blogging for a while, and managing far too many sites, I felt like the projects I had proposed when first joining the company weren’t getting any traction. Eventually, I felt like I was just a cog in the wheel, and was starting to get restless.

I should have fixed the problem myself though. If I had been smarter at the time, I would have requested Mark transfer some extra money to my account each month so I could hire the help I had needed to complete my projects, rather than waiting for resources to be assigned to me. My biggest problem was that I was waiting for resources and changes to occur, rather than taking the initiative and making things happen.

PicApp

A great company, with an interesting idea. As always, I was hired in part because of my passion, and breadth of ideas. I found myself in a good position, but realized two things early on. The first thing was that I wasn’t good at marketing in a traditional way. I could get people to write blog posts about PicApp, or allow me to use their blog as a platform, but being aware of the numerous marketing opportunities that were around me eluded me. I didn’t understand how difficult marketing was. The second thing was that the people already employed by PicApp had the rest of the community management aspects covered, leaving me feeling out of place. Hiring a community manager that they didn’t need lead me to realize that they really needed another marketing specialist, and so I stepped aside.

The only mistake I made here was not having a better understanding of what they needed, and what I could give to them. Had I understood my own marketing limitations better, I probably wouldn’t have taken the job, instead only consulting on the various blogging related questions that they had.

Now

Of course, I will probably make more mistakes going forward, but right now, the biggest “negative” in my career is how much I’ve let my personal brand fade. I’ve been so busy with College Crunch, a great project, that I have neglected all of the things that brought so many previous great career opportunities in front of me. Not sure yet what to do about this, but I am content with every facet of my current career, other than not being in the spotlight.

Hopefully, these lessons are not lost on you, and you’ll be able to see the opportunities you have, weigh them properly, and make as few mistakes as possible in your blogging-related career.

Originally posted on January 19, 2009 @ 3:33 pm

My Career Time Line

October 2007

Bloggy Network sold some blogs to Splashpress Media and I went with those blogs, as I was posting on around half of them. I was really sad to leave as it was basically a company I helped build up from nothing. I always enjoyed working with Jacob, and the others.

I became the new Head of Marketing, and spent time working on many sites. I also helped work with the advertising sales representative in navigating some of the strange rules of buying and selling advertisements on the web.

The company has acquired many blogs since then, and has evolved nicely. It is still creating many blogging stars, and its main properties are doing quite well.

May 2008

After finding myself feeling rather limited in my job, I decided to move on to an opportunity I found on the Problogger Job Board. I became the Community Manager for PicApp. At the time, this felt more like a public relations job, and I was looking for a community job.

The opportunity was a great one, but at the time, the company, and myself realized that a Community Manager wasn’t really what they needed and I decided to move on from the project.

I still consult with them from time to time and applaud them for all of the amazing moves they have made in making the product more blogger friendly. And with the advances that they have made, I sometimes wish I could go back…

September 2008

There was nothing on CollegeCrunch.org, a domain that Ryan Caldwell had bought to build out. I came in as project manager to provide content, organize content, promote the site, and just be a general nuisance to him (joking of course).

This is the project I am currently working full time on. There are over 600 pages created, with over a third having content in them, with the rest being created just to help me keep organized as I flesh out the site. It is one of those projects that the more work you do on it, the more you realize there is to do.

Originally posted on October 22, 2008 @ 11:20 am

Blogging Jobs Slowing Down?

6 Replies

Over on the Perfomancing Hive forum, I have been hearing a few people rumble about the decreasing number and per job rate of blogging and web related positions.

Some very talented and experienced people are starting to find it harder and harder to find new contracts that can pay their bills. Other bloggers are noticing a decline in advertising revenue.

Has anyone else experienced this? To me, this goes against my own thoughts that as businesses tighten their belts, they will want to transition to the web, where a larger audience can be found at a less expensive rate. Or is that not the case?

Has there been a slow down in blogging related jobs? Has their been noticeable drops in advertising revenue? Sure, big companies have cut their blogger pay, but does that mean the whole industry is suffering?

Please, if you have any insights on this, let me know in the comments below.

Originally posted on August 19, 2008 @ 1:42 pm

How I Got My Job: Searching Job Boards

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Some people ask me how I found my current job as Community Manager for PicApp, and the reality is more simple than they realize. The job was posted on Darren Rowse’s Problogger Job Board. I saw the job, and thought that I would be a good fit for it, and so I applied.

The rest is history. If you want to be a full time blogger or make money online, I recommend keeping an eye on the various job boards in your field. There are more than a few out there and they sometimes have great golden nuggets hidden in their listings.

I couldn’t believe that a non-blogging job was listed on the job board, but when you consider that they were looking for someone experienced in the field of blogging and someone who could relate to bloggers, it was the perfect place for them to advertise.

If you can’t find a blogging related job that suits your interests and pays you a “reasonable” wage, then you aren’t looking hard enough.

Here are a few great resources:
Problogger Job Board
WordPress Jobs
Freelance Writing Gigs
Blogger Jobs

It never hurts to apply. The worst they can say is “no” and then you are no worse off than when you applied.

Originally posted on June 9, 2008 @ 5:11 pm

My Blogging Retrospective Part 1: Don’t Take Every Job

Becoming a Problogger

My history with blogging has been as much about passion as luck. I have always enjoyed writing fiction, but never assumed I would take a career in writing as computers and technology were my primary passions. When Darren Rowse decided to go on vacation, I applied as one of the people that would guest post on one of his many blogs while he was gone, and despite not blogging on his most important blog, Problogger, I was still noticed by Jacob Gower, who has purchased a variety of high profile blogs.

At first it looked like I was going to have two part time blogging jobs, but Jacob stepped up and hired me full time. My pay was fairly low, especially after taxes were set aside, but thanks to the support of my wife, we were able to make ends meet. My first tip for someone looking to go full time in blogging is to find ways to cut your expenses. The lower your expenses, the easier it is to find a blogging job that can pay for them. Especially today with competition getting higher and higher for the positions available online, you will want to find ways to make yourself very valuable to companies while still being able to afford to eat reasonably.

I started out doing over a dozen posts a day on a variety of different sites. I was writing for a large group of brand new blogs as well as a small group of heavily established sites. I found it very stressful but also very exhilarating. I was working from home for a living. I didn’t care about the long hours or low pay because the job was interesting and fun. I spent hours researching my favourite technologies and writing about them. I was on top of the daily advancements in computers, cell phones, and blogging. It was a hard job, but also felt very fulfilling.

As time progressed, I slowly made more, and was able to do less posting. I was grateful for this change as it allowed me to switch from being a low end content producer into a writer. I was able to give thought and emotion to my articles, as well as really start to show my creativity and passion. And again, I felt fulfilled by my job.

The biggest issue that I started to notice though was that I had made everything I was interested in, into a job. I no longer had any hobbies outside of work, and even playing video games became a work oriented expenditure of time and energy. Instead of diving into a game and enjoying it, I was thinking about the storyline, graphics, controls, and plotting out my thoughts for review later on when I was back in WordPress composing a post.

This realization changed blogging for me, and made me wonder about my ability to do it for a longer period of time. If all of the things I was interested in were connected to my job, how would I unwind and just enjoy myself? I still recommend that anyone who wants to really get into blogging start writing about your passions first, as it will help set you apart from the masses of new blogs being created every day where the sole purpose is to generate profit.

Taking on Too Much

Money was still tight at the time, and so I didn’t have long to really reflect on that realization, and then did what most bloggers end up doing: I took on more projects.

I started a few blogs of my own in hopes of one day working entirely for myself, as well as working on some blogs for another network, dailypixel. I went from working ten or more hours a day to spending all day on the computer. I tried to set some time aside for my wife, but otherwise I was glued to my RSS reader, or the WordPress administration panel. Sometimes, I would pull an all nighter in hopes of catching up in work, as I always felt like I was falling behind.

When taking on the job with James at dailypixel, I really didn’t think about my worth and ended up requesting a rate of around ten dollars for every three posts. How did I come to this rate? I assumed that I could write around three posts per hour, and so I would be making a rate of ten dollars an hour. The issue is that I didn’t think about research time, nor the fatigue I would have from both my full time blogging job and my own personal projects.

Soon the blogging burnout hit all of my work and Jacob, my boss at Bloggy Network noticed it and asked me to adjust the deal so that I would only be working for him. Other part time blogging opportunities came my way, and I turned them down. Either because of the deal with Bloggy Network or because they weren’t going to offer me a rate that could really make it worth my time to ask Jacob to break the deal.

I eventually closed down the blogs I had started for myself as they weren’t growing very fast, and looking at the statistics of the newer blogs that I was working on for Bloggy Network, it would take upwards of a year before the sites started showing any real signs of making a profit from the time I was putting into creating content for them.

Changing Blog Networks

Pick the right network. One thing I learned early on was that different bloggers do exceptionally well in different blog networks. It takes a variety of different pieces that need to fit together perfectly before you create an amazing blogger to blog network relationship. For the most part I experienced that connection with Bloggy Network. I was pretty much in charge of a variety of projects, and was depended on for a variety of things. This made me feel important and successful. Being in control of the content I produced, and feeling like I was part of the executive team helped me remain inspired and committed to my job.

Switching over to Splashpress Media, I felt a little like a small fish in a big pond, and despite Mark Saunders, the owner, working hard to integrate me well into the team, I still always felt like an outsider. Add to that the lack of response to some business related ideas I had, and it just wasn’t a good fit for me at that time. I definitely learned a lot by being in the wrong blog network for me, and so I am definitely glad I had that experience. Also, I want to mention that Splashpress Media is a great company to work for, but it just didn’t suit me at that time in my career.

Bigger blog networks definitely feel more secure in nature, but if you aren’t part of the executive team, you end up feeling like little more than a content producer, and after doing that for a few years, I wanted more control, and responsibility. Smaller blog networks feel more unstable, but also more agile and responsive to business related ideas. Also, at Bloggy Network, everyone needed to be a swiss army knife with a wide range of usable skills over and above writing and so there were very few instances where I was bored.

Conclusion

My main tip in this post would be that anyone looking to become a full time blogger in a blog network take the time to research the blog network and talk to both people within the company and outside of it to really get a good understanding of the culture and needs of the network before you join and don’t take every job that comes your way.

This post is part one of three parts. The third part will be the 500th post on this blog and as part of my work towards this milestone I will be working on improving this site greatly, so please keep checking back.

Check out Part Two: Build Your Personal Brand
Check out Part Three: Going Beyond Blogging

Originally posted on June 26, 2008 @ 4:34 pm

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