Last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Paygrade column profiled the career of blogging. Here’s what they said about the pay and hours:
THE PAY: Most self-employed bloggers take in between $2,000 and $10,000 a month from ad sales, says Henry Copeland, founder of BlogAds.com, a Web advertising concern based in Carrboro, N.C. The few that have huge audiences make significantly more, he adds. During election time, for example, a political blogger can bring in $20,000 to $30,000 a month, says Ken Layne, West Coast bureau chief for Wonkette.com, a political gossip blog owned by Gawker Media. Some bloggers are employed by companies, but they are often part of the marketing department, and blogging is usually only a small part of their duties.
THE HOURS: Self-employed bloggers set their own schedules. Writers of breaking-news blogs say 40- to 60-hour workweeks are the norm. To scoop his competitors, Mario Lavandeira, author of the celebrity-gossip blog PerezHilton.com, says he averages 19-hour workdays that start at 5:15 a.m.
$10,000 a month sounds pretty good–but that’s for more than a full-time job. Want to earn a bit of cash and renown without the 19-hour workdays? Try a blog network like GigaOM, which includes Web Worker Daily, NewTeeVee, and GigaGamez. Though we’ve hired a couple great new bloggers for WWD–welcome to Mike Gunderloy and Matthew Reinbold–we are still looking for web workers who write well to occasionally review software, services, and gear.
If you are interested, post a review on your own blog showing how you can smartly critique any of the tools–software, hardware, or otherwise–that make virtual work fun and profitable. For extra credit, include tips and tricks for boosting productivity using those tools. Add a short bio at the end so we can see how you’re putting your own twist on the web worker life. Link back to this post and we’ll be sure to see it.
Questions? Ask them in the comments.
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