The Pay for Blogging

... is about the same as the pay for making crank phone calls.

Some folks are seriously looking to make money with blogs, using ads and such. Talk about deluded. Everyone knows that the reason to blog is to change the world. The point is not to become the next Bill Gates - the point is to become the next Thomas Jefferson. ("All bloggers create accounts that are equal ...") Well, there's that and the, uh, groupies. Most non-bloggers don't realize that we bloggers have more groupies than The Rolling Stones had in their prime. Sometimes I can barely step away from my laptop for a cup of tea, so dense is the crowd of screaming fans.

Seriously, though, the motivation for blogging for most of us is intrinsic. What is the motivation to eat a great meal or to have sex or stroll on the beach or to play a game? Some things provide their own motivation.

I think that the motivation for blogging has two components - those of us who do it are intrinsically motivated to write and to converse (through writing). If we only wanted to write, we'd have private journals. If we only wanted to converse, we'd meet friends at a coffee shop or the park. Given we want to do both, we blog. Blogging is more like having some folks over for dinner than renting a convention center and standing before a microphone. Not only are we unlikely to change the world - we're unlikely to change the minds of most of our readers. Yet we continue to type because for us it is more fun than bowling.

I suspect that about 98.9% of the folks who are motivated to blog with dreams of fame and fortune will have joined Amway or found some new hobby before the start of 2008. I wish them luck and hope that in the midst of finding some way to pay the rent they find activities that engage them even when there is no extrinsic motivation.