JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

Everyone is talking about how to make money from blogging. There are lists floating around from one “problogging” blog to the next showing all the ways you can make money with your blog. Of course, the purpose of these lists is to get you to click on the affiliate links to all of the great places to make easy money with your blog, which sounds a bit like the “make money placing classified ads” scams that send you a booklet on how to write classified ads selling booklets on how to write classified ads selling booklets…

What it comes down to is that there are really only two ways to get paid via blogging. Either you get paid for your words, or you get paid for your ideas. Pretty simple, isn’t it? An even simpler way to frame the concept is that bloggers basically fall into two types: writers and salespeople. Writers are paid for their ideas, and salespeople get paid for their words.

From what I can tell, the vast majority of “probloggers” are salespeople, in that they are being paid for their words, not their ideas. You could be charitable and call them freelance copy-writers, or micro-publishers, but they are basically salespeople. They set out to aggregate an audience that have certain things in common, such as an interest in digital photography, and then they attempt to get companies to pay them for access to that audience. Nothing fancy or new, just what magazine publishers (and radio stations, etc…) have been doing forever; pretending to be in the “delivering content to readers” business while actually being in the “delivering audiences to advertisers” business.

So the next time you read one of those pros waxing poetic about how revolutionary blogging is and how it subverts the established publishing industry, stop and ask yourself if the blogger telling you that is trying as hard as they can to turn blogging into the established publishing industry, or if they actually have something to contribute besides a trendy, faux-ironic take on marketing…