Kyle Hepp

April 22, 2009

I found a fantastic article from the Wall Street Journal touching on several topics I’ve posted about here before, such as long hours and no job security but with more in depth information.

1% of all U.S.Americans make a living blogging! I find that news really exciting. I think it means that as the profession goes mainstream, it will A. Be a more respectable thing to have on your resume, and B. Possibly move towards a different system, where bloggers are actually hired by companies rather than contracted as freelancers (meaning benefits and job security).

Here are a couple quick facts about those of making a living online:
Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year.

The barriers to entry couldn’t be lower. Most bloggers for hire pay $80 to get started, do it for about 35 months, and make a few hundred dollars. But a subgroup of these bloggers are the true professionals who work at corporations, serve as highly paid blogging consultants or write for sites with substantial traffic.

Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours — 50 to 60 hours a week.

The story also goes on to report that bloggers, in general, report very high job satisfaction. I felt that way up until recently, which probably has to do with the fact that the rug was pulled out from under me, metaphorically speaking, and my job is no longer as financially sound as it once was.

WSJ adds:

But for how long can nearly 500,000 people who are gradually replacing whole swaths of journalists survive with no worker protections, no enforced ethics codes, limited standards, and, for most , no formal training? Even the “Wild West” eventually became just the “West.”

This has me thinking about where I want to go in life. Ideally I’d love to make a living being a full time wedding photographer/blogging for myself. Realistically, how many of us out there have a shot at becoming Dooce or Pioneer Woman? No matter how easy it seems in theory to start a blogging empire, no matter how many people think they can just start a website and make some money, truth be told, it’s not likely. Heather and Ree are both extraordinarily talented writers, Dooce is married to some kind of internet geek who makes her site look amazing (and saves her thousands of dollars in web design fees). And Ree seems to have a fantastically interesting life story. In another article I read recently about blogging, which I can’t remember, or I’d link to it, the author said something along the lines of, “If you want to make a living off your blog you better either have an extremely interesting life, or be able to make your boring life sound extremely interesting.”

I’m not there yet. I’d love to go back to school and do a degree in Writing. Then again, I’d also love to do a degree in Dietetics and become a nutrionist or get an MBA so I’d have a freaking clue how to actually make money from my photography business. There are a lot of things I wish I could do, but life’s too short!

Anyways, I just thought that was a cool article and wanted to share since I know a lot of you are also interested in blogging for a living.

4 Comments

Alright, everyone…the topic that everyone seemed the most enthusiastic about is sharing a travel story. Plus, that sort of combines some of the other ideas that were tossed in the mix, like “favorite weekend destination,” or it can also be a childhood memory WHILE you were traveling. I mean, really this could be anything…your scariest, funniest, most memorable, prettiest, most romantic travel story, whatever you want.

FYI, the reason I’m not going back to the poll method to choose group blogs is because I’d rather only the people who are actually going to write on the topic choose it. If I have a poll it’s open to all the readers (not that that’s a bad thing) but I think they sometimes choose topics that you all don’t necessarily want to write about. Twice, in the past we’ve had group blogs that were clear winners in the polls but everyone was complaining that they didn’t want to write about those topics, which is probably because the readers chose it, not the writers. See what I’m saying here? Plus, we also made it pretty far down our list of topics from last time so I wanted to get some fresh ideas!

I like the idea of having a Chilean guest post but unfortunately I’ve been trying to get S. to guest post forever…so until he “feels inspired,” that probably won’t be happening around here anytime soon.

PS. Big news, coming VERY SOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

8 Comments

April 20, 2009

Anybody up for another group blog?

Leave suggestions for a topic in the comments!!!

22 Comments