Going Pro
Much to my own surprise, I am rapidly moving into what I consider to be the part-time equivalent of a “Pro” blogger based on the criteria in Darren Rowse’s “What makes a Problogger?”.
Is it the fact that somebody blogs for another person, getting paid per post? Is it someone who blogs alongside others, sharing the revenue between them? Is it somebody who maintains their own blog, making an partial, or substantial income from their blogging activities?
I agree with these because all of the bloggers I consider to be pro fit into at least one of these and most of them fit into all. I can think of at least one more point that might identify a person as a pro blogger. Is it when people respect you enough as a blogger to approach you for blogging advice where some even offer to pay? Some of these things are happening to me. My blog related income is growing, traffic numbers are rising, and I am increasingly getting tapped for answers to blog related questions, some paying and some not.
My personal blog and Caden’s Page have historical seen the majority of the attention on HOEI.COM. I will be highlighting each of my blogs in the coming weeks to talk about why I started them and where they are today. I hope that I can raise this new front page blog into the ranks of those respected in the “Pro” blogging community. I believe I have some relatively unique insights on blogging and will be sharing them here on this blog.
One of my favorite bloggers in the pro category is Dareen Rowse over at Probloger.net, if you couldn’t tell by the references I have already made to his site. I read Darren’s blog almost daily because he is straight forward, seems like a genuine guy, and he is a professing Christian. I am not setting out to become a full-time (six-figure) pro blogger like Darren, but I do hope to learn some things from him to help keep my blog activities profitable and growing. I should be comfortable inside the four figure range by the end of this year and hope to double the blog related revenue by the end of 2008. This is realistic if I stay on track with my current growth.
Keep an eye on the Problogger site over the next couple of days. Darren’s releasing his latest Group Writing Project where the top prize going to a random participant will be $1001.
Even though this blog is young, I hope that Darren’s Group Writing Project will be built around a topic that will match up with some of the post ideas spinning around in my head this week. I did not participate in the last Group Writing Project over at ProBlogger, but I might just have to jump on this one. I am not counting on any cash prizes from any of Darren’s sponsors to get me into the four digit revenue range this year, although it would be very nice boost to the bottom line.
