I have been reading, and sometimes answering, queries which are posted on AdSense Help Fourm and Blogger Help Forum (username: wasaweb) on various topics. Over the past couple of months, one thing has struck me quite forcefully. There is a persistent misconception that somehow setting up a blog, writing a few mediocre articles, and slapping some advertisements on the blog will make the blogger a fortune. The internet is a gold-mine and blogging does the digging. Blogging is the panacea to financial woes one is going through. The future is bright, the future is blogging.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out like that for the vast majority of people. Incredulous that they have not seen the income they expected, many bloggers become angry, disillusioned and disappointed. Some of the posters in the forums (see above) are very upset. Even if misguided, it is not easy to see the sadness created when the dream goes bust. Perhaps they would have been better off doing something else, since many people invest quite a lot of effort and time into blogging.
The situation is much worse for those who have been duped by a scammer promising riches one way or another. There are many different types of swindle in operation, but quite often it involves purchasing a package or a system that has a small up-front fee, and with a very much larger monthly fee deducted from the victim’s account or card. Where there’s money to be made, and people are desperate or gullible, there are inevitably swindlers. Many reasonably well-educated people seem to fall victims. It’s easy to chant the mantra if it sounds too good to be true, it probably definitely is and no such thing as a free lunch, but even the brightest and the cleverest have their weak moments. We all use the internet, gather information and purchase things, but there is still something mysterious about the whole thing. We hear about those made fabulously rich by the internet. One must always read the fine print, especially when something is “free” or priced at a token figure. If someone is promising lots of money for little work, then the alarm bells should start to ring.
In thinking that people can make money from the internet, (would be) bloggers are actually not wrong. Just like many of us can write and want to become novel writers, but there are very few writers who can make a living solely from their creativity, so it is with blogging. A blogger must realize that is a hard slog to build a blog with rich content and oozing with creativity.
So if anyone is reading this entry by chance, I implore you: write a blog by all means, and put your heart and soul into it, without expecting quick monetary returns. When there’s a blog with lots of content, you never know, you might make some money. But even more importantly, there is something that is part of your life, which is worth more than any financial recompense the blog may bring.