Anyone here who doesn't blog for money??

[silent maverick]

Blogs are growing exponentially these days. I'm just curious, anyone here who doesn't blog for money?? I mean, those individuals who takes blogging more as of a hobby than a money maker??

[Bloggeries]

I bet most of the people who genuinely take it as a hobby make more money then those who do it for the money. If you give value in life someone will pay you. Most blogs deliver no value but want money.

What I mean by that is you build a great blog on say pets and blog about it all the time because you absolutely adore pets. Eventually you'll get offered $ for ads, or throw some adsense etc.

I think many people here blog for reasons besides $.

I do the blog reviews for fun and to help people with some suggestions; it's been operating at a loss the majority of the time. I do 90% of the reviews for free which I pay a writer.

[emeryn]

Hm.. I first started off blogging when I joined a competition and wanna show that I'm really into pets. Unfortunately, I wasn't selected to go into the finalist stage.

But, eventually, as time pass by, I blog as a hobby and somehow I felt really happy that people review or comment on my post. =)

[QuirkyJessi]

I don't blog for money.

[rodaniel]

I do not blog for money. In fact, our site has no ads, banners, widgets or any sort of monetization stuff. As a result of that, there are no sidebars. Our single-column layout is designed to keep the content - for good or bad - front and center.

For my wife & me, blogging & web dev stuff is a hobby, an opportunity to learn, and a chance to share things that are of interest to us with our friends & family who are spread all across the country.

However, that being said, I certainly still want to see my blog grow. I'm always on the lookout for ways to improve my writing, boost the SEO, and refine the site bit by bit. Generally, our site traffic stats are steadily increasing, but I still need to figure out how to encourage more of our readers to leave comments... To me, that's a truer measure of how well the blog is doing.

[Ferox]

I started blogging for my own benefit- to keep a sort of diary of an important timein my life and to really keep studying during the holidays. It was only a few weeks later that I started to find out about ways to increase traffic, and that they could be a money earner.

[Harald Johnsen]

While I've set clear monetary goals for my blogging, money certainly isn't the reason I blog. It'd be absolutely ridiculous to get into blogging if money was your primary reason to do so. First of all, you'd suck at it and wouldn't make much money anyway, secondly, blogging is an extremely inefficient way to make money - so if it's money you're after you should do something else. I mean, there's lots of work involved, and the chances of a good financial reward - compared to doing other things - are tiny at best. To make a good living doing this you pretty much have to be among the very best in the world. And nobody will be among the very best in the world doing something just for the money.

So while I do expect to make a good few dollars doing this, I think money really is a benefit of blogging and not a reason to blog. If money was something that really motivated me I would have stayed at my job as an investment banker, because I certainly made more money doing that than what I do now with my tiny consulting business. Money should never be your reason to do anything if you really want to be happy in your life. What you make money on should be so enjoyable that you'd do it for free anyway. That gives you eight hours more per day, and it vasty increases your chances of making some good money too. And if you don't, who cares, you're still rich in a way that most people are not.

When I first started blogging I didn't even consider making any money on it directly. I wanted to blog because I enjoy writing, I have stuff I want to get out to more people, and I think blogging is a great way to do just that - it's direct, instant and interactive. I thought it'd be good for branding purposes - which would make me money indirectly - but I didn't think I could make much money from advertising etc. This was a while ago, though, and then I started hearing about people driving mad traffic and having ads etc and pocketing a nice amount of cash every month, I went "hmmmmmm....." and pretty much realized that as the benefits of blogging seemed to be on the increase, the reasons not to fell away one by one.

As stated by Bloggeries: "I bet most of the people who genuinely take it as a hobby make more money then those who do it for the money." I second that. Big time.

Anyway, gotta quit these late night rants. The reason why I go on about this, I think, is that I see people at places like Digital Point getting into blogging for the money. These kids would be greatly helped by realizing that there is other stuff they can do which is much more likely to help them achieve both their monetary and their personal goals. They'd probably make more money flipping burgers, and even if they do ok with blogging (fat chance....) I think there's no way they'd be able to do it long term and find any sort of fulfillment in it. After all, it really doesn't matter how far you climb the ladder if it's leaning against the wrong wall.

[Ferox]

That's a good analogy there. I've seen a lot of posts on DP asking how to set up automated blog posts so they don't have to do any work. Depressing.

[Harald Johnsen]

Originally Posted by Ferox

That's a good analogy there. I've seen a lot of posts on DP asking how to set up automated blog posts so they don't have to do any work. Depressing.

Yeah, that stuff goes on a lot over there. Luckily, with search engines now having a stronger focus on quality, these guys won't really be getting in people's way much with what they're getting up to, and I HOPE for their own sake that they'll soon realize that they're wasting their time. That segment is truly overflooded now, so how easy is it going to be making money on MFA home loan and melatholioma blogs using copied material in the future? It'll be absolutely impossible to make decent money on that stuff for 99% of the people doing it.They'll get ten UVs per day solely from their own linking (you don't get search engine traffic when there's 6000 listed ahead of you, and no one else will link to your crap) and eventually just give up, and things will be back to normal (sort of).

[OwenCutajar]

I blog because I enjoy it. The money is a nice extra, but it's just that. If it had to dry up tomorrow, I'd still blog ...