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Tristan · 07-30-2007, 12:30 AM

They would be very very rich with little effort. It would be like predicting that Google would become huge before it did.

I think that you might have it the wrong way....If you concentrate only on making money, then you're more likely to lose than if you concentrate of focusing your talents and your passions on delivering something of value to people. I can immediately tell when someone is not passionate about what they are writing about because it shows in their words and often their site is plastered with advertising that overpowers the actual content on their site, which turns me off too because I can tell what they are really focusing on instead.

People gravitate towards content or resources that help them and when you get visitors, you can monetize that traffic fairly easily from that point, but it requires having them in the first place.

In the case of blogs, professional is not always best because blogs are meant to be personal and your personality comes through in a blog and people like that rather than the clinical nature of other newspieces. Your blog can be funny or downright profane, depending on your personality, and you can still get visitors. But most of the biggest blogs out there are one-person blogs because people value what that particular person has to say. For example, if Steve Pavlina began to outsource his writing to other people to do for him, I (and probably many others) would quit reading his blog because it's no longer stevepavlina.com in a sense. Being a great writer is secondary to building up a voice and personality with your visitors.

Blogging is great and there is potential to earn money from it, but it's not a turn-key business model. It takes years of dedicated work to build a reader base to the point where you have sufficent traffic levels to monetize. So it's no reason why the "get rich quick" people burn out quickly blogging and the people who are passionate about their subject and would continue to blog even if they did not receive money from it are the people who win at the blogging marathon.

07-30-2007, 12:30 AM	#2 (permalink)
Tristan Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: San Diego, California Posts: 53	If People Could Predict That Then... They would be very very rich with little effort. It would be like predicting that Google would become huge before it did. I think that you might have it the wrong way....If you concentrate only on making money, then you're more likely to lose than if you concentrate of focusing your talents and your passions on delivering something of value to people. I can immediately tell when someone is not passionate about what they are writing about because it shows in their words and often their site is plastered with advertising that overpowers the actual content on their site, which turns me off too because I can tell what they are really focusing on instead. People gravitate towards content or resources that help them and when you get visitors, you can monetize that traffic fairly easily from that point, but it requires having them in the first place. In the case of blogs, professional is not always best because blogs are meant to be personal and your personality comes through in a blog and people like that rather than the clinical nature of other newspieces. Your blog can be funny or downright profane, depending on your personality, and you can still get visitors. But most of the biggest blogs out there are one-person blogs because people value what that particular person has to say. For example, if Steve Pavlina began to outsource his writing to other people to do for him, I (and probably many others) would quit reading his blog because it's no longer stevepavlina.com in a sense. Being a great writer is secondary to building up a voice and personality with your visitors. Blogging is great and there is potential to earn money from it, but it's not a turn-key business model. It takes years of dedicated work to build a reader base to the point where you have sufficent traffic levels to monetize. So it's no reason why the "get rich quick" people burn out quickly blogging and the people who are passionate about their subject and would continue to blog even if they did not receive money from it are the people who win at the blogging marathon.