The Hobby
May 6, 2006 by Dave Earley
Filed under Media
This post was a reply to Allister’s comment on my return post. It ended up being too long, so I’ve made another post out of it.
Allister: Its normal to have a break from blogging. Especially when its only a side hobby. Just make sure you don’t completely disappear. I’ll still be checking in.
You say “only as a side hobby” Allister, but I don’t know of any bloggers who could realistically make an actual living off their blogging alone (other than the couple most read blogs in the world), which pretty much makes it a ‘hobby’ for everyone. Obviously I’ve put far too much thought into this, but I’ll go on.
Margo Kingston used to write for the Sydney Morning Herald, and then started WebDiary on the SMH website. I’m sure she still had other responsibilities, but part of her paid job was blogging. When the paper wanted to take it in a different direction, she quit in protest and started running the blog on her own steam, own money, and hoped to continue to make it viable. It wasn’t ,and she eventually quit it – letting it continue to run as an online community project, or something.
Now that’s all my sketchy memory of what happened, but that’s what rushed into my head when I read “especially when its only a side hobby”. It would be interesting to see anyone who has made a successful business model out of a blog. I guess it’s not the blog that makes it, but it’s the exposure your blog gets and the areas that then allows you to move into – book deal, journalism, or even radio and television now if your podcast or videoblog is impressive. Not all blogs are searching for wider recognition – I know one person who was flamed for finding the ’secret’ blog of a complete stranger – but I think generally we all have delusions of grandeur.
One good business model might be Daily Dancer. I haven’t been to his website in probably almost 12 months, but he could be making a lot of money. He started on Blogger, got a mention and became fairly widely watched. The last time I checked he had moved to his own domain. What does he do? He dances. Daily. That’s it, a videoblog of him dancing, not particularly well, to many songs. Now if his viewership is high (possibly in both senses), and he offers an extra ‘dance’ each day for just 50 cents, he’ll make money. This isn’t how a so-called-serious blog is going to make money, but it’s a start for someone. As an aside, I decided to check out his site before posting this. Looks like he’s trying to make some money through cafepress.
Salam Pax is a good example of someone who launched a career based on his blog (two links there – to cached original blog, and to his most recent blog that has also not been written in for a while). From his blog in Baghdad leading up to and during the Coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003, he got a book deal, which made him pretty famous. Now he’s done documentaries and journalistic work in Iraq, as well as touring around the world. This all from a blog – in admittedly special circumstances, but a blog nonetheless. So if you really want to make it big from blogging you have to somehow prove that the blog isn’t all you’ve got to offer, but that you can diversify. The blog itself isn’t necessarily going to make money, it’s wherever you go from there if your blog gets ‘discovered’. And, as in the case of Salam Pax and others I’ve read about, blogs do get discovered.
