I’ve often pondered if there were any way I could make money from this silly little hobby. That pondering has been doubly deepened recently given that my wife’s hobby (“occasions” card making) is now bringing in a little cash each month and that kerfuffle about Mr.Kottke quitting his job to blog has got me a-pondering like a pondering person who ponders a lot.
How could I make money here? Adverts? I don’t think my traffic is high enough for that, for example, whilst I do post Amazon Associate links on my site when I can, I’ve made precisely an amount less than £5 in the three years since I signed up. Hardly what I would call anything approaching a steady income, it’s even a bit of a stretch to call it an “income” at all.
Subscription fees? Charge people to read the blog? Well, firstly, it would be a tad hypocritical as I don’t pay any subscription fees anywhere else. Secondly, and let’s be honest here, who in their right mind would pay to read my waffling nonsense (I bet half of you stopped before you even got this far).
Ahhh maybe I’ve hit on something there. They say that content is king, so maybe I need to focus my content, pick a market niche and dominate it THEN I can pull in adverts and sponsors and the like. That’s what all the Pro Bloggers do, they start with one or two blogs then start to expand their empire. Trouble is, anything that I’m interested in is already taken and, as it happens, I quite enjoy being able to point this little hobby (horse?) of mine wherever I damn well please. I’d hate to have to constantly please devoted readers all expecting posts on the same core topic/genre, that would be awfully restricting.
And then the next question pops into my head: Should I be making money from this hobby?
Put it this way, I spend a lot of time in front of the computer in my own personal time (discounting breaks from work) and have done so for the past six or so years. The main “skills” I’ve learned, aside from improving my casual writing style, are focussed around web design. I’d love to do it full time but where would I start? Well I’ve been slowly building a portfolio of sites I’ve worked on, but the leap from doing the odd personal site for friends to handling small business sites is larger than I care to admit and would require that I spend even MORE time learning additional technologies.
Or maybe I’m just stuck in a rut?