Blogging for Dollars

Wouldn’t it be great if….

We could sit at home in our underwear every day, pounding gallons of coffee, jabbering endlessly on our blogs, and getting tons of money to do it! That’s the life huh? I spent a few weeks reading some books on building and monetizing successful blogs before I started this one up, with the intention that I’d take over the internet with my wonderful wit and insight into the world – and get rich in the process…

Well… let me tell you what I learned from all of those blogging experts. You can make money with a blog, and lots of it – you just need to focus your blog on telling people how to make money with their blog. Those people will in turn build blogs focusing on telling people how to make money with their blogs, and so on and so on. They feed on each other. Everyone wants easy money. There are damned few people out there making a living with their blogs, but the ones that do, are filthy rich from it because they were the first.

I never really believed I’d actually make any money with this blog, but it was a nice diversion, it was a new concept for me, and I tend to have a obsessive streak when I get hold of a new idea, so I buried myself in building it.

I can’t say I haven’t made money, a few of my good friends out there have used the ‘buy mike a beer’ button to send me a few bucks.. so far, I’ve made just enough to pay for the boot-up price for the web hosting and domain regestration.. so I really can’t complain! Thanks guys, you know who you are!!

Well crap

Then I started thinking that everything I’d read about blogging in all those books might be true! It’s really not easy to come up with things to write about week after week. Maybe thats why everyone blogs about blogging, it’s the perfect form of naval-gazing.  I have a shit-ton of things I’d love to rant about, but most of it’s off-topic from this blog, and seriously – who would want to read any of it anyways?

To have a successful blog they say, you have to offer valuable content, and focus on a niche so your readers don’t get confused about your product – they get comfortable with the stuff you write about, so they keep coming back. They are reading your blog after all, because they were looking for information about a specific subject – when you throw a wrench in there and blog about something off-topic for your niche, they get confused and go away.

Fuck it

Well here’s my problem. I have a tremendous aptitude for ADD induced inspiration. I have a hard time focusing on just one thing. I’m interested in all sorts of things, and at different times. What I’m completely obsessed with one day, I’m totally ambivalent about the next. It frustrates ME, I can’t imagine how annoying it must be to anyone trying to figure out what the hell is going on in my head, let alone on my blog.

So after struggling with trying to force myself to write on one small set of subjects here, I’ve decided to say fuck it, if it’s not enjoyable to me, then what’s the effing point? It was either allow myself to ramble on about what I want to ramble on about, or shut this blasted blog down after only a month because it’s making me miserable trying to focus on one topic.

I also keep reading that a successful blog should be relatively impersonal.. that is, don’t blog about yourself – No one cares. This concept bores the hell out of me, because sometimes the only thing I have to write about is the crazy crap that happens to me, or how I screwed up one thing or another. I’m an endless source of blog-fodder; to ignore that would be a waste of 8 bucks a month for hosting fees!

This of course is the raging delusion of an egomaniac, it puts me squarely in the ‘I-think-I’m-cool-enough-to-write-about’ category, but who cares. It’s my blog, and I’ll self-serve if I want to. Personally I think it’s rather cathartic, working through my problems by writing about them – and I enjoy sharing my foibles with my friends.

Luckily I don’t have any followers other than friends, so I don’t have to worry about alienating them!

Cheers!
Mike