Seth has some interesting things in response to the question - ‘How do I make a lot of money blogging?’ here.

“The best bloggers make money, but mostly as a side effect, not as a direct result of setting out to use a blog to make a profit. It’s just too long a ramp up time, too frustrating and too uncertain to be the best path to make a living.”

A few thoughts:

Seth’s described my own experience of making money from blogging pretty well. I didn’t set out to do it at all. I blogged for a year before it even crossed my mind and even then it was initially an experiment (just like adding many blogging tools and features was for many of us in those days).

I suspect that Seth’s words also describe the experience of many money making bloggers who stared out in my era (4-5 years ago). Most started blogs on topics that they were passionate about, had interests in and enjoyed - they didn’t set out to become rich but the money came as a byproduct.

HOWEVER - I wonder whether times might be changing a little.

A New Breed of Blogger?

Over the last couple of years I’ve seen an increasing number of bloggers get into blogging with the primary objective of making money - who actually ended up doing it with some success.

I’m not talking about what some might consider A-listers, but bloggers more medium sized blogs more more niche topics that are pulling in enough to go full time with their work or at least heavily supplement their income. They’ve not hit the ‘big time’ publicly because they either want to keep their success private or because they’re only a year or two into it and their blogs are now only just starting to take off.

I do recommend that bloggers choose topics to blog on that they enjoy and find more reasons than just money to start blogging - but wonder if there’s a new breed of blogger coming up through the ranks that started out with different motivations and who take a different approach to their blogging than ‘old timers’ like Seth and myself.

PS: check out Seth’s post Write Like a Blogger which contains some great tips for bloggers and how they should write.

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