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