Do you Blog for Passion or Money?

The modern day blogging has completely evolved from its initial form. What once started as an online diary where people would maintain a narration of their personal lives, blogging has transformed into a money-making industry full of lucrative opportunities. Soon after the term ‘blog’ was coined in 1998 by Jorn Barger, several online tools for blogging like Blogger, Blogspot and WordPress were introduced. But it wasn’t until 2005 when blogging entered the mainstream as several commercial projects like Mashable, The Huffington Post and TechCrunch took over the blogosphere.

This is when blogging went from being personal to commercial and from being about passion to money. A ‘blog’ that was once treated as a personal online space is now used to attract visitors with the intention of earning money through multiple sources.Nowadays, it is easy to set up a technology blog, install a fancy theme, hire content writers and build enough traffic to attract advertisement requests. Not just that, corporate blogs actually hire content writers to keep their sites running. I’m sure most of these bloggers don’t really do it for the passion.

Blogging as Money-Making Proposition:

Did you know that the average salary of a blogger is around $30-40,000 a year in US?Moreover, blogging sites earn millions of dollars every yearvia pay per click, affiliate linking and displaying banner ads. An interesting infographic on SocialMediaToday revealed the top earning blogs wherein the monthly revenue of The Huffington Post was $2,330,000 followed by Mashable with $560,000 a month. These blogs have established their credibility in the industry. Majority of online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from these reputable blogs.If one is writing with the intention of making a sales pitch, what is the passion in that?

Passion or Money – How to Determine?

Although I am not against the idea of turning passion into a living, is every blogger nowadays really passionate about what they do? Or are they simply in it to earn big bucks? How does one determine what the motive really is? Being a blogger myself, I have first-hand experience of both these aspects of blogging. In my opinion, there are certain peculiarities that can ascertain whether a person is blogging just for the sake of it or have other ulterior motives.

You Blog for Passion if you:

• Have a personal blog of your own.
• Don’t like having any advertisementsor marketing gimmicks on your blog.
• Update your blog regularly without letting any other work become a hindrance.
• Write with an unbiased and individualistic approach.
• Write freely without worrying about using ‘keywords’.
• Generate real discussionsfrom genuine readers on your blog.
• Share your blog posts only on relevant social media platforms and blogs.
• Don’t need inspiration from the internet to write on a topic.

You Blog for Money if you:

• Write for several other blogs but don’t have your own personal blog.
• Stuff your blog with ads, banners and paid links.
• Prefer writing a paid article over updating your blog.
• Write on sponsored topics with a biased approach.
• Hire an SEO or affiliate marketer to promote your blog.
• Use Google Trends to write keyword oriented content.
• Google to find money-making propositions for your blog.
• You have a write for us page on your blog to encourage other writers to contribute.
• Randomly dump your posts everywhere on the social media with no relevance whatsoever.
• Search for trending topics on the internet and rewrite them.

Why Do YOU Blog?

After going through all the above mentioned traits of a blogger, the question you need to ask yourself is…why do YOU blog? Are you among several who consider it a financial necessity to blog? Or do you love blogging irrespective of any compensation? You decide.