I blog because I like the community. In the past four years, I have “met” people from all over the world and had the opportunity to hear their viewpoints on my various rants. That was my main reason, and it continues to be…for the most part. Are you feeling warm and fuzzy yet?
This blog’s ultimate goal is to make money. I also think it will be fun to see if I can win the blog popularity contest. Why do I really care?
My younger son has a mild form of Aspbergers. He is eight years old, and until this year, school has went fairly smoothly. Not so much last year. My sweetie doesn’t get the subtle social situations that arise in the classroom and on the playground. I wish that school was an emotionally safe place for him to learn these nuances of communication, but it isn’t. Which leads me to a more specific goal: to work at home and homeschool him.
I have a master’s degree in education, so the homeschooling part doesn’t intimidate me a bit. In fact, I taught a couple homeschool groups when I lived in Austin. Now I live in East Texas, and the only people homeschooling around these parts are people who don’t want their kids learning about evolution. That’s fine by me, but I don’t really fit into that group, so I plan to go back to Austin. However, I don’t plan to go back to teaching in its horrific school system, nor would I subject him to it. After teaching in it for three years, I’ve simply seen too much. I don’t think any child should have to endure it, disability or not.
Here is the dream: I blog my way to a decent freelance income for myself. I quit my teaching job, move back to Austin and rent a cool pad in downtown Austin, where we can walk to Whole Foods and BookPeople. (Books and food, what more do we need?) My son and I participate in Austin’s hip homeschooling community and my son learns and makes friends with kids who aren’t being raised by crackheads. I wish I were kidding.
So blogging becomes a way for me to freelance for myself. A few years ago, I made a decent living as a freelance writer until my biggest client switched their focus from writing to video. So I decided that I would write content to make money for myself and keep the profit.
Cha ching.
So what’s your reason?
[...] Readers, if you exist, I promise you that I will never subtly manipulate you. I will blatantly seek clicks by having Google Adsense on my site, and will display books through the Amazon affiliate program that I think you might be interested in. After all, I want to make money. There’s another one! Affiliate. An affiliate program is an agreement that you make with a company to put their ads on your site in exchange for a (usually small) percentage of what the company makes from the purchase that originated from your site. However, I promise you that I will be nice. Like I mentioned in a previous article, community is important to me. That means that I will happily let you leave comments for links by enabling DoFollow in the comments once I figure it out. And once I figure out that little mystery, I’ll be glad to share it with you so that you can do the same. Then I will visit your blog and leave comments even if I secretly think you are the devil’s spawn. Oh, and I know it was probably annoying that I linked to a previous post when I only have two previous posts at this point. I figure the Google spiders will like it better that way, though. [...]
I wish you the best of luck with making money and more importantly, homeschooling your son. I thought for a while about being a teacher, I still might find myself drawn towards it someday, we’ll see.
I don’t think I’m ready to make money from my blog yet, but it’s definitely an idea I’ve been tossing around lately. I’m trying to focus more on refining and expanding my writing skills, so that I can try to get some freelance gigs, and maybe something bigger down the road.
I could make NO money from my blog because it’s just a little slice of life thing. And I’m not witty in writing, although I am in real life. Weird. I REALLY hope this works for you; I have been reading you a long time, so I know all about Austin and all that other crap.
I am blogging because I love writing. I also want to earn money to put towards my wedding, my son’s surgery and my debt. Sooo much to blog and earn, sooo little time, but I believe it can be done!!!
I started to blog because I was bored and needed something to keep me engaged during the day. I then discovered that you could monetize your blog so my focus has shifted a bit too. I would like to be able to make enough money from my blog to have a sustainable income so that I do not have to work at a regular job as much. I am going into teaching Special Education and I had some experience with a child with autism so that little bit of insight into your life was nice.