Blogging as a Career

photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

You may find yourself in a 9-5 office situation wherein you’ve done all your work for the day already, made sure that the boss has gone through all her appointments without a hitch, and have replied to all company e-mail correspondence and forwarded them to concerned parties as necessary. You sit back and marvel at your industriousness as you smile victoriously while glancing towards your office issued desk clock, expecting it to read somewhere within the boundaries of 3 and 5pm. It’s usually at this point that you’re shocked to see that it’s only an hour and a half past lunch.

It isn’t uncommon for the free-spirited writer to run out of things to do inside an office cubicle, no matter how well equipped or comfortable it is. If writing is a passion and you’re in some job you don’t want to be at in the first place, you probably ask yourself over and over again one of the most fundamental questions of human existence: Why?

The principal answer to that question is money. Your day job (or whatever it is) puts food on your table, and without that you probably wouldn’t even have a table at all. But then again, are you cursed to forever living in a claustrophobic, corporate existence when you know that you’d really want to do the opposite? Blogging as a career seeks to provide a solution for both: as a way to earn money that isn’t connected to any office, and as an avenue for your writing zeal.

A great way to get into blogging as a career is to start a professional blog during your free time at your day job. Aside from it having a very, very minimal startup cost (just the fee to pay for your domain name, web hosting and, if ever, design) and a virtually low career risk financially since you won’t be leaving your job just yet, you’ll suddenly find yourself less bored at the office because there’s something for you to do that would be a source of residual income in the future.

To properly start blogging as a career, take into consideration that the actual blogging or writing aspect of it is only a part of the entire process. Aside from journaling consistently on a regular basis, marketing your blog is a definite must if you’d want to increase the number of hits to your site, such as by visiting other blogs and linking them, and joining online forums and discussion groups where subjects related to your blog are concerned.

More hits to your blog increase your viewership and potential for influence, and this provides for a win-win scenario because an increase in traffic to your site inadvertently increases the chances that visitors will click on content related banner ads from Google (you did sign up for some, didn’t you?) and products from sales partners such as Amazon.com. These services are one of the main forms with which to build a stable flow of residual income, and are integral in blogging as a career.

Blogging as a career doesn’t have to begin as dramatically as making a grand exit from the office ala Jerry Maguire. It’s a lot more practical, not to mention easier, to get started right now in the discomfort and claustrophobic atmosphere of your own office cubicle. The internet has certainly become a boon to moonlighters, hobbyists, and multi-tasking employees the world over.