Blog Professional

Jeremy Wright today posted about the idea of whether the industry of professional blogging is paying bloggers enough. Jeremy follows that up with another article that explains his frustration and his idea that the answer is no, we are not paying bloggers enough. Jeremy asks a good question, “Does anyone pay bloggers enough.”

My response is absolutely not! I added to the comments on Jeremy’s post and I am going to reprint it here because this is a very important topic that should be discussed by anyone that is in the professional blog ranks, or companies that are paying bloggers.

Speaking not as a network owner or President, I think that my business too at One By One Media and Bloggers For Hire sometimes gets called out for our payment practices. We pay our bloggers top dollar and usually more than a network and more than they can earn with ads. With that said, our work is farther and fewer between than just the every day advertising earner through adsense or as a network blogger. I do see that we have similar problems with pay and it is a self correcting market at this point. As the need for bloggers increases, it will soon be a better paying position, but as long as we have 67 million of them to choose from and they all are doing it for free and would love to get a little bit for their effort, we will have the problems faced right now about “not paying enough”. If I can get a quality blogger and pay them $500 a month or if I can find the same blogger at $100 a month, which would I choose as a business owner? Bloggers often sell themselves short because they don’t understand the market. For us business owners in this market it makes it tough, so we have to add other value add items like management of the blog, web analytics and other things that bloggers perform as experts, but we cannot charge for these things because there are bloggers out there doing it for free. Sooner or later, as this becomes more of a mainstream position, the ones that stick it out now and offer what others are not offering will benefit from an industry correction, but until then, we have to hold on and do what we can to be profitable and hope it comes soon.

The market for professional bloggers will eventually change. Their will be your major league players and those that are warming up in the minors. Some bloggers will be more able to leverage their ability than others. Some bloggers will have a higher reputation in the industry and will be able to make themselves free agents to the highest bidder. It will be capitalism at its finest. This in turn will cause a ripple affect (or is it effect?) that will make a difference to everyone in the market. As the top players get better pay, the bottom tier bloggers can also ask for more as the market shifts. Are bloggers being paid enough? No. Is this a trend that will continue? No. Bloggers need to gain the confidence that their abilities are requiring top dollar. Companies wanting to have the best of the best will begin paying a premium for those bloggers. this will have the trickle down economics that will benefit everyone.

Tags: Jeremy Wright, Professional Bloggers, Blogger Salaries, Blog Networks, Business Blogging, Bloggers For Hire, One By One Media

I was reading through an article by Ben Arnoldy of the Christian Science Monitor regarding bloggers making money blogging:  The author interviews Darren Rowse, one of the Internet’s most famous professional bloggers, and a co-founder of the b5media blog network.

"A lot of people say it’s sort of like a little investment. They write something every night before they go to bed, and another page on their website gets added. And the more pages they’ve got, the more chance they’ve got of earning a little bit of money," says Darren Rowse, the webmaster of problogger.net, a site that helps bloggers improve their income.

Darren is one of the first people I think of when I hear of making money for advertising on their weblog.  It’s tough work to make the kind of money Darren does, and in most cases it is more in line with the other blogger mentioned, Kevin Vahey of Charlie on the MBTA who is purported to have made $1,000 in the whole year.  The article is correct, it’s probably not the time to quit your day job even if it’s paying you minimum wage.

For me, Darren’s comment sums up the thought of blogging for money:

Several highly successful bloggers also caution that there’s no free lunch. "I worked anything from eight- to 16-hour days over the last three or four years just trying to do this," says Mr. Rowse. "And a lot of people don’t see that."

I do see that Darren as I sit here at my computer trying to get out a post or two and to get my own blogging business at Bloggers For Hire ready for work on Monday and the rest of the week.  All this while the Super Bowl is on.  I am making enough to make the mortgage payment these days, but if I could finally teach myself to go without sleep, I might be able to make the car payment too!

Tags: Ben Arnoldy, Christian Science Monitor, Darren Rowse, Professional Blogger, b5media, blog network, Kevin Vahey, Bloggers For Hire, Blog Advertising, Business Blogging

One of the blogs I frequent is Podtech.net. I go here often not only because I want to make sure my partner, Tris Hussey, doesn’t screw up as their professional blogger, but because I get to see some pretty cool stuff about businesses on the Scoble Show.

One such video I was sure would be a total snoozer turned out to be pretty cool. One of the cool things about these shows is sometimes Robert talks to guys just like me that are passionate about what they do and their service. I get to see them as I should see myself. I’m the founder here at Bloggers For Hire, and I can see some similarities between this man and his business and mine. I liked his line about, "there has to be a better way" of selling online. I said that same thing to myself when I started Bloggers For Hire. There has to be a better way for companies to do this blogging thing. That’s how our seed was planted and it has grown and blossomed quite well at this point. Now if I could only get Robert to sit down with me and do a session like this!