by Rob Paterson
April 14, 2008 at 11:34 am
· Filed under Andy Carvin, Blogging, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Jeff Jarvis, Paid Work, Seth Godin
Jeff at NPR with Andy Carvin, me and David Weinberger taken by Doc Searls
Jeff Jarvis writes today about the value of his blog - He says that it has got him all his work over the last few years. The same is true for me. NPR, all my work in New Media, Blackwater, Education - all my paying gigs have come through this medium.
Our money comes largely as a side effect: Here is Seth on that -
At a seminar at the local library, someone asked, “how do I make a lot of money blogging?”
My guess is that at least week’s seminar, the one on growing orchids, no one raised his hand and said, “how do I make a lot of money growing orchids?”
Sure, people make money growing orchids. Some people probably get rich growing orchids. Not many though. And my guess is that the people who do make money gardening probably didn’t set out to do so.
Blogging is much the same way. The best bloggers make money, but mostly as a side effect, not as a direct result of setting out to use a blog to make a profit. It’s just too long a ramp up time, too frustrating and too uncertain to be the best path to make a living.
If it makes you happy (and your readers happy) it’s a great place to start. Step by step you get better at it, and then you discover the ancillary benefits. But the benefits kick in best when you don’t set out to achieve them.
What about you?
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bhc3 wrote @ April 14th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I was just thinking about this notion. There are a lot of reasons that people start out blogging, and trying to make money day 1 is probably not high on that list. But the experience you highlight here is the best kind of reason to blog. It’s your passion and people are attracted to that.
I wrote about the reasons that people blog, “The Eight People You Meet in Blogging”. Feel free to read more here:
http://bhc3.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/the-eight-people-you-meet-in-blogging/
I’ll just say, that after 13 years with my last job, I was wondering what the job market was going to be like once I left the old for the new. Due to blogging, podcasting (over 50 interviews), and yes, that frivolous activity of “social networking” I had 3 bona-fide job offers (two of which didn’t exist until we co-created them) in hand within a week of walking out the door, when it could’ve easily been another outcome.
There is quite a lot to be said about having a public footprint - it’s much easier for other people to see at a glance whether you are a genius, an idiot (as the fellow behind Intellipedia has famously said), or somewhere in-between.
The old saw “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” is most definitely no longer true. We’re leaving our tracks all over the web, and at least from my experience, that’s a very good thing, both when IN a job, as well as when pursuing another.
I did a recent writeup of InsideView and their SalesView offering, which has a bit more though on enterprise social networking implications, for those that are interested. Nice conversation burbling around that particular entry. We’ve only just begun to truly tap “the network effect” - whether in a personal or organizational sense.
Cheers,
Dan
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