Monday, April 20, 2009

Blogging

Dear Rejector,

my first question is : do you think that blogging can pay as well as writing novels can?

Yes, if you're the chick who thought up "i can haz cheezburger." Otherwise, probably not. The money to be made in blogs is pretty illusory. I think the ads in my blog have made me about $70 total.

My second question is: how did you become a writer?

I started writing when I was in 3rd grade. As to how or why, I don't really know. As to how I got published: practice, practice, practice, followed by rejection, rejection, rejection followed by a little bit of luck and a decent manuscript after 10 bad ones.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Ten rewrites of the same manuscript or ten different would-be novels?

The Rejecter said...

Ten different would be novels, though I am counting the ones I wrote in grade and high school.

Anonymous said...

The question itself is phrased problematically: "can pay as well as writing novels." That, of course, raises the question: how well does writing novels pay? As all writers learn at one point or another, the answer to that question varies greatly.

Merlin Mann and John Gruber gave a talk at SxSW about blogging. They talk about the money-making aspect and provide tips on what sort of things help and what a new blogger should avoid. The talk is about an hour long and very entertaining. Anyone who blogs, or is interested in being creative, should listen.

Anonymous said...

thanks rejector for your answers.

Jacob Duchaine said...

The money to be made blogging can typically be assumed to be $20-$25/1000 visitors to your site if you play your cards correctly and leverage all your advertising space.

You can theoretically make plenty of money at it, if you have something a whole lot of people want to see.

The number of people making money at it is only a small fraction of the people doing it though, so don't quit your day job.

Don said...

The old running joke is that the way to make money with a blog is to start your blog in 1999, and then . . . .

Issendai said...

It helps to have a blog designed to generate ad revenue, since most people, given their druthers, blog about topics that don't pay. Making several thousand dollars a year off a well-regarded, midranking technical or financial blog? Not that hard. Making the same money off a blog about publishing, activism, religion, or your cat? You'd need a cult following that loved clicking ads.

S.D. said...

Spare change from blog ads can be nice, but I don't use adsense or anything bc I NEVER click on ads. I'm scared of them.

I have two novels finished and some short stories. So I guess I'm eight away from a good one :D