Is it wrong to blog for money?

May 28, 2007

One piece of advise: "If you start off blogging for money, you might as well not start at all."

Remember this sentence, we’ll get back to it later.

I’ve been reading (about) blogs for a while. It was not until I clicked on a Google ad, which led me to John Chow’s site, that I understood that there is money to be made with blogging. Frankly, seeing that John made about $7000 with his blog that was about half a year old, I got interested in blogging. Imagine what reading this will do to someone in a country where an average annual salary is about US$2000.

See, the problem with this is that some draw the conclusion that John made $7000 just by writing in his blog. They tend to see it as easy money right away. They fail to see that John has his eggs in several baskets. He’s not just splashing some Adsense and some other quick “fire and forget” monetizing options on his blog. He has at least 1 other non-blog site where he makes money. He uses his blog to generate traffic for his other online businesses.

I’m naming John here as an example, because his blog was the one that triggered my interest in blogging. My first thought was “If he can make $7000 within 6 months, I should be able to make at least $2000 within the first 6 months“. And that’s when I decided to start blogging to make money.

NO, it’s not wrong

It is definitely not wrong to have “making money” as motivator to start blogging. It’s just like any other job you would do. It’s to make money. The reason why people generally look forward to a promotion is because it brings more money in the bank account.

However, just like any other job, blogging should be something you need be good at. First you need to be able to express yourself so others can understand you and learn something from you. You also need to share useful information in your blog, because that’s what brings people back. This means that the topic of your blog needs to be one you love yourself. It’s no use writing about airplanes if you hate flying.

Passion makes money

I love web related work. I love to research the Internet, I love web development, I love online communities, making friends with people I might not ever get to see, people I never knew existed. Then that is what I should blog about. Why?

Because I won’t get bored writing about those things. And the more I write, the more there is to read, the more traffic I can get to my blog (if promotion is well taken care of), the more money I can make with my blogs.

It’s like with any other job. If you work somewhere, only motivated by the money you earn, you will not produce at your top level. If you love your job, you will work with passion, which creates better chances for growth and excitement. The more you grow, the more exciting life becomes and the more money you can make.

Again, don’t focus only on blogs

Even if you think you can make some decent money with your blog, “don’t quit your daytime job” yet! In any case, make sure you have other sources of income besides your blog, because Internet will always be in beta, not finished. Things are constantly updated and anything can go wrong at anytime. Prepare yourself to have something to fall back to when your blog isn’t making you the money you expected.

Blog for money, with passion

So even though it’s not wrong to blog for money, there are some questions you might want to ask yourself first:

• How are my writing skills?
• Who is my audience?
• What will I write about
• How much can I write about this topic?
• How much passion do I have for this topic?
• How much knowledge and experience do I have with this topic?
• What else can I do to make money?

Remember the quote at the beginning of this article? This advise is given numerous times on the web. I know it’s well meant, but it’s also easily misread. If you’re trying to tell people to focus more on their content than on making money, so they eventually will make the money, find better phrasing to do so.

Blogging for money is not wrong. Just make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Posted in Blogging