I have been working as a professional blogger for a whole lot of other people for the past two years. Working full-time as a blogger for others, I have found that blogging can be a highly lucrative job. Let’s just say that there was more than one month this year that I cleared a five-figure income for the month.
That said, I have quit a large percentage of my blogging jobs and am taking a two-month-maybe-more sabbatical from the rest of them in order to pursue some projects of my own. At least one of these projects is a blogging project - www.sanfranciscoissexy.com, my new blog about everything that is sexy in San Francisco.
I have an idea in mind for another blog project - a micronetwork of blogs for which I would be the sole writer. But I’ve been debating back and forth about whether or not I want to do that project. The fact of the matter is that there are only so many hours in a day and the more that I look into blogging for myself, the less sure I am that it can be a really lucrative endeavor.
Two recent articles from a couple of my favorite bloggers seem to confirm that there are drawbacks to trying to make good money as a blogger. Fabian over at Small Fish Big Money wrote last month about the shrotcomings of the blog as a business model. And Violet Blue of Tiny Nibbles wrote a really personal post about how she gets a lot of perks and freebies from blogging and freelancing but money hasn’t been one of the perks lately.
These posts didn’t discourage me from blogging for myself. But they were a couple of the things in a whole series of things that have me thinking that blogging isn’t really what I want to do for a living. That said, I do want to do it for fun. I like writing about writing here at Real Words and I’m really excited about the fun writing I’m doing over at SanFranciscoIsSexy.
I do know enough about the business of blogging to make some pocket change from the work, I think, but I also think that this can’t be the point of blogging for me. I’m not sure if I’ll return to blogging for other people in the near future or not. I’m poised on the edge of this really exciting precipice and I’m not really sure what’s going to happen when I leap from it.
For now, I’m wrapping up the work that I’ve got outstanding for my clients, taking some time to just be and breathe and working on blogs like this one because it makes me happy to do so. Sometimes money isn’t everything, important though it may be.
Ever since launching this personal writing blog, I have struggled with how to define it. I have tried keeping to a schedule of writing certain columns that I felt really passionate about (such as the green creativity column which I continue to think is a highly important and interesting topic). I have tried writing about the work that I am doing. I have tried providing resources and other things that I believe are of interest to people reading writing blogs today.
And it hasn’t worked.
For months, I have asked myself why. And the conclusion that I have come to is that I haven’t really been honest with my words in this blog. I said that it would be “real words from a real writer” but then instead I tried to fit those words into the boxes that I thought they belonged in. I tried to write like a blogger or write like a web writer, discussing topics like SEO.
There’s nothing wrong with those types of blogs. I love blogs about writing and blogging and web writing. I think that they are important and interesting and informative. But this blog hasn’t consistently been any of those things and I think that the reason is because I’ve spent too much mental energy trying to make the blog natural instead of just letting the words flow.
For those of you who know me and my work, there is a big shift happening for me right now. I am moving away from working on the blogs of other people and trying to follow my own passions and interests a little bit more. I am trying to get away from just being a web writer and really trying to explore truth through words. And not even just through words but also through art and dance and other types of creativity.
What I hope is that this blog will become more honest and that the words here really will be real words because I am a real writer and I think there is value in that voice.
Question of the Day: How do we write honestly when we are also writing publicly and commercially?
The past year has been a year of constant change for me in terms of the writing work that I have been doing. I started off the year working on a few travel blogs, technology blogs and wrapping up my part of the book that I co-authored on Alternative Home Building. These days I’m doing less travel blogging, more technology and working on a book proposal for a San Francisco travel book. So some things are the same and some things are different.
The thing about freelancing, at least for me, is that there has to be this constant balance of stability and change. I like having the same clients for a long period of time and doing steady work for them. However, I don’t really like just doing the same thing over and over again without starting any new projects. The difficulty seems to lie in learning how to start new things without failing to give attention to the older projects.
I was once told by a friend that I’m the kind of person who is a “fire starter”. I love to get projects going but I don’t like to maintain them over time. I’m always interested in moving on to the next new thing. Freelancing works well for me because there are always new projects to get excited about. But moving on to new things all of the time makes it hard to feel like there is any consistency in the work that I do so I’ve had to learn to hang on to jobs that I don’t always love to keep some stable work around.
It’s definitely something that has to be balanced. And something I’m learning better how to do each day.
Question of the Day: How do you balance the desire for steady work with the desire to have exciting new projects going on all of the time?
I’m spending most of today getting caught up on wireless technology news for some articles that I am working on for various clients. This has caused me to think back upon my favorite wireless articles that I have written in the past. For me, the clear winner is a pair of articles that I’ve done for DialAPhone on cell phones used in various types of art.
I am always really fascinated by the merging of technology and the world of art. This can include everything from technology as a subject of art to technology as a medium for producing or altering art. Regardless of the place on the spectrum where the merging takes place, I find the merging of interest because it takes two completely different areas of innovation (science-based innovation and creativity-based innovation) and brings them together.
Check out the original articles:
