The Internet/A Love Hate Relationship

In 1997 I discovered the internet. I loved searching the websites: online museums, holidays sites, etc.  I learned how to create a web page and loved it. And I learned to love internet shopping.

My dislike, however, is the number of sites that preach that "yes, you too can become a successful blogger" and give you just enough information to get you to buy THEIR packages. While they do provide information you can typically use, they glamourize website creation and blogging as a way to make money.  They even go out of their way to publish what their monthly income was.  Who wouldn't fall prey to a comment like "my blog produced $9000 this month".  They may also casually tell you that it took them years to build but the headline was so "eye-catching" that the general reader did not pick up on it took years to build. They also don't tell you ALL that you need to be successful . . . for that information you have to pay and in some cases, the cost is significant.  And it's usually those who cannot afford to spend the money who get suckered into doing just that.

What they don't tell you is that there are approximately 180 million blogs in existence.  What they don't tell you is that only a few actually end up producing the amount of income they boast.  What they don't tell you is that you make your money through hit conversion, the number of hits per page that actually turn into sales.  They don't tell you how to build traffic, they don't tell you to be careful of copyright infringement, they don't tell you how to price your products or how often to create one. They also don't teach you how to build a mailing list.  They don't discuss search engine optimization (there are over 1 billion websites on the internet), they don't discuss the methods and the time it takes to build up traffic to your page if you're lucky.  They don't tell you the differences in what needs to be done for a blog as a hobby, to develop a supplemental income or turn it into an actual living. 

What they don't tell you is that only 14% of bloggers actually earn an income from them.  What they don't tell you is that the average income is $24,086 annually, $33,577 for a corporate blogger and that half of all bloggers earn only about $1,000 annually.

There is much, much more than just creating a page and publishing it to the internet.

Time after time, their readers so desperately in need of additional income fall prey to their sales pitch, only to find out that the only one that benefited is the blogger who won them over.

So to those of you who come across these sites and think that you too are going to develop a $100-$200K income from blogging, realize that this happens only to a rare few. If you feel that you have the time and the money to spend on attempting to get a livable blogging income, please give it a shot, but don't forget that not everyone who tries it will come out a winner.