Several months ago I wrote about the pros and cons of working from home. At the time I focused on the employee working from their home for an employer. Working from home for yourself is a totally different ball game; right now many people are experimenting with the idea of working from home by writing posts for online publishers, especially blogs.
The concept sounds great: write about content you are interested in, choose your own hours, make time for family, answer to nobody (except perhaps client deadlines). Make money continually for previous writing – financial freedom at last!
Is “professional blogger” the next logical career path? I don’t think so. The concept is simple enough: build a site, drive traffic, make money. I suspect most people can even accomplish step one very easily. The ever-changing methods for driving traffic and monetizing content require a significant investment in time that is beyond the reach of many people with full-time jobs and other obligations.
The common advice for aspiring bloggers is don’t quit your day job, ironically this goes against the fact that in order to generate a reasonable income from the medium one would need to devote the equivalent of full-time work hours to the process. The two worlds don’t fit together particularly well; like anything else with a low barrier to entry, many people will occupy the lower echelons of the blogosphere while only those with the talent (and/or luck, if you will) and time (endurance?) will rise to occupy the 1% top of the heap.
Tags: Blogging, Employment