Can you get rich blogging?

I won’t make any promises. Whatever you hear or read or have been told, blogging isn’t just point and click.

I would not ordinarily buy a book which makes such a promise. The get rich quick schemes come and go and seem to be a scam or, they only work for one out of every thousand or so people (until the rules change and they stop working at all). But, today I bought this book, Get Rich Blogging by Zoe Griffin.

One reason I decided to buy the book was the glamorous style of site which celebrity gossip bloggers (like Zoe Griffin) run. Who doesn’t find all that appealing, even if you don’t love pink on a regular basis? The sites have street appeal and they seem to make money, they say they make money and they look like they make money.

Get Rich Blogging, is good for bloggers who prefer to hire someone to get their hands dirty rather than learning how to DIY (do it yourself).

One thing I noticed as I read this book is the idea of looking professional while not really putting yourself out there to learn how to do it yourself. This book promotes hiring professionals quite often. How can you know who is a professional if you don’t know enough about blogging to judge the work? So that was one problem I have with Get Rich Blogging.

The book is good for beginners. More time should have been spent on the early chapter about deciding what to blog about. Spend time on coming up with your niche, your genre and your theme for the site you are going to put so much time, energy and passion into. If you don’t have all three of these things (time, energy and passion) it isn’t going to work, no matter how many professionals you can afford to hire.

Zoe Griffin writes about branding your site and attracting advertisers in a good way

I will use some of the information in this book,. Although I’ve read lots of people writing about branding, marketing and using social media I have not devoted myself to these aspects of my sites. I’m not a social butterfly and marketing schemes make me feel cheap. I also have an issue with following the pack when it comes to writing to please Google. I don’t like blindly following authority.

I do want my sites to be doing more and I need to find my old passion to put time, energy and passion into them again. I know it would help if they were making money, I’d be happy to see them support themselves again. I used to post daily and then my sites were pulling in income from selling text ads by the year. That worked until I began to feel burnt out. Between trying to do what other people said I should be doing and trying to put in endless hours on my sites I lost the love for web publishing.

This book won’t teach you how to love web publishing. However, one thing I have learned from reading Zoe’s book is to think bigger.

One thing bloggers can learn from Get Rich Blogging is to think bigger, reach higher, and add glamour and polish to your site.

See also, Get Rich Vlogging by Zoe Griffin.

I've been writing for the Sex-Kitten network since 2003, took some time away from it and then started up again. The old content has been pushed into an archive (which you can find it you look for it but no one would know to look). So, I am reposting it to my own blog.

The posts are both fiction and non-fiction. They were written at a different time in my life and some of my opinions and ideas may have evolved since these were originally posted. Not much though. I've always been pretty true to what I really believe - only my understanding changes as I see the facts differently. The fiction, of course, is just fun. Fun to write and I had fun reading it again and remembering when I wrote it.

I was going to link them here, but they aren't that hard to find here and there on my site.

If you also wrote for (with) the BackWash community network of writers/ columnists join us for a BackWash reunion.

Here is the content from the post above. In text for those who can't read it from the screen captured image above.

Spin your Thoughts with a Journal

Do you keep a journal? Sometimes its called a diary, I think that's the old fashioned term. What you write in your journal is up to you. Be creative, rant about your family, chronicle your life, or just spin your thoughts on the web.

Keep your journal in a secret place if you don't want anyone to read it. Or, if you feel like sharing you can read what you write to friends or even keep your journal online with sites like Blogger. Of course, you can do both. Have an online journal and another secret journal for just yourself.

Journals can be kept in plain notebooks or fancy lined paper books you buy in stationery stores like Hallmark. I like to write with a fine tip black pen but you can experiment with all kinds of pens and colours. Add stickers or stick in clippings from newspapers and magazines. If you really want to put in a lot of clippings have a look at scrapbooking. That's another form of journaling but there tends to be less writing and more drawings.

There are lots of websites about journaling and scrapbooking. Have a look around and see which appeals to you.

I used to write for a site called BackWash. There was the general side, then came along other versions and offshoots: kids, pets, lit (for snobs) and adult. The adult spin off was the first to branch out from the main site. I wrote there (I wrote on original, adult and kids - at one point there were three of me).

Anyway, when I wrote for Adult BackWash my login was Spirit of the Night and I called my regular column, Bait and Switch. It was fun most of the time. I wish I still knew where a few of other others from Adult BW are now. I have only kept in touch with one of them.

Rather than continue dragging along the backstory, here is what I found today from the debris of the old site. This is a poll I put up. I still like it.

This image is not clickable - it is cut and pasted from the original (which used to be clickable). If you want to answer, leave it in the comments.