Blogging & Making money.

You know one of those little things we don't talk a whole lot about here in the Greensboro's Blogospere is making money. Ed has mentioned it a few times. Billy quit his job, and is making a go for it; and, Kehaar has made several complaints about Google Adsense. Other bloggers just don't talk about. Roch of course runs his own ad network, and some of the bloggers have no interest in money.

The truth is we don't really talk about it. First let me say Greensboring is my baby, and I love blogging, and that it is always going to be my first priority. But the thought of being able to quit my job and spend more time with kids simply by adding a few ads to my site, does not in anyway conflict with my blogging ethics.

The question is how much can a blog make? Who makes the most in Greensboro? We are after all the blogging center of the known universe. I would imagine several of us make 4 digits a month atleast? Right? Take for instance the blog from Michael Brown called "view from the sidewalk" which is showing a Google pagerank of 8. Michael earned links to his site by the unique story of being a homeless blogger. What Michael may or may not know is that the top rated blog in the world BoingBoing, is only a pagerank 9. That means Michael for no less sense of the word would probably be making atleast half of the $40,000 BoingBoing makes each month, if he chose to take advantage of his unique situation.

So here's the deal, since no one really talks about it, I will here. My goal is to do this full time, and be able to have the freedom to run out in the middle of the day with camera in hand, and write about events. My ultimate goal is get out from the slave labor of a job I work at in real life, and be able to spend more time with my kids. I don't want fame and fortune, just a living wage to have the freedom of doing something I enjoy. Thanks to this community, and the support of other bloggers linking to this site, you've made part of those dreams come true, and if you've noticed I've tried to repay the community by getting out and photographing and writing about some unique places in Greensboro. I want to do more. I think if everyone in Greensboro banded together, we probably all could be full-time bloggers, and that's the reason I try to link to everyone in Greensboro I see.

Time will tell if I can succeed at this, and if I don't I will keep on doing what I love, and that's blogging about my hometown, and the world around it.