Having a blog is a common occurrence these days, and that is not a bad thing. However, the industry has changed so much I have started to ask myself, is the art of blogging dead? And is there any point of having a blog if you aren’t making a ton of cash?
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When I started blogging nearly 10 years ago, it was still frowned upon and not considered a “real job”, whatever that is. In the years that have followed, there has been an upsurge in the amount of blogs that have taken off and become a small media empire within their own rights. The blogs that get the clicks and views get a lot of attention, and many have changed what it means to run a blog as a profitable business.
My own personal journey started because I wanted to write. Call me a dreamer but the idea of having a weekly column in the likes of the New York Times or a regular slot in Cosmopolitan magazine was the goal. We can blame Carrie Bradshaw and Jackie Collins for giving me the impression that being a writer was a glamorous lifestyle choice. The reality is that being this type of writer is not as readily available as it once was. This was over 20 years ago, I was still a teenager when these ladies were peak glam and goals. Everyone wanted to live the lives that they had, it didn’t matter that one of them was a fictional character. Then blogging arrived and everyone could live out their would-be writer dreams. Maybe it is because everyone thinks that they can write that the internet is saturated in content that should never have left the drafts section. I am not immune to this either, there are so many questionable posts on this site that make me cringe when I stumble upon them during routine blog maintenance.
One of the most frustrating things about the shift in blogging is the money aspect of it. Sure, it is possible to make a heap of cash with your blog, but it is not the be-all and end-all. When I tell people that I run a blog, they instantly ask, “how much money do you make?” This is a highly personal question, and while some people don’t mind talking about the wealth they have amassed, I find it intrusive. My standard reply is “I do alright”. This is not the answer that people want, they want to know the figure, if I have hit millionaire status, or if I’m flat broke. I could do better but I am up against bigger websites with click-bait headlines that draw people in to get a quick dopamine fix. Who really wants to read a column anymore when you have articles that are barely a paragraph long? As it turns out, the tide might be changing.
Heading to the comments section of social media is a scary idea at the best of times but it does give some insight into what people want. All you need to do is look along the long list of replies to see that people are fed up with click-bait. Some people will read the article and share the information in the comments so that others don’t have to waste their time clicking through to a website that takes forever to load. Most of the time, the comment explaining the article is better written than the article itself. If that isn’t a sign that writing standards are slipping in favour of some click-throughs, I don’t know what is.
The art of blogging has been declining over the years but it looks like it is about to have its own renaissance of sorts. The number of people who want to read articles are on the increase and the short, snappy pieces that drove traffic to sites may be on their last legs. That is not to say that people are seeking out information or gossip, quite the opposite. People just want to find their information quickly without battling through ads and articles that have nothing to say. Maybe, just maybe, blogs will go back to their roots with personal columns that would not look out of place within the newsprint of serious journalism while being surrounded with informative posts that we know and love.
That brings us to now. Getting to be one of the greats that has a “proper writing” job may seem like a pipe dream to me (that is, if you exclude the book that I had published) but that doesn’t mean that I can’t be the writer that I always dreamed I would be. I may never grace the pages of the bigger newspapers and magazines, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t pretend on my own site once a week. Who knows, maybe The Weekly will become the must-read opinion column of the century. And maybe pigs will fly.