If you're not a full-time blogger yet, and you're wondering whether you can earn a reasonable full-time wage over the course of a year, the short answer is yes. But will you earn it, and are you capable of putting in the time, effort and commitment necessary to earn a "career" salary? Do you have the patience to see the process through what could be 1, 2 or even 3 years? And do you have a financial fallback for that duration? (If you're already full-time blogger and earning a reasonable living, you're one of the favored few.)

Does Blogging Compare With Traditional Freelance Writing?

Whether you can transition to full-time career blogger is something you'll have to answer for yourself. The average freelance writer (for print) in North America historically made passable income. Only a few ever made a great, consistent income without long, long hours. And print writers are paid a lot more per feature articles than any given pro blogger. At least according to all the research I've done on the writing industry since 1981.

On the flipside, blogging on your own sites could earn you income - something for which there is no analog in writing for print (other than going through the headache of publishing your own magazine, or using vanity presses to publish your books). But as with any print publication, you have to do the necessary promotion and take on many roles - researcher, writer, facts-checker, editor, publisher, ad sales person.

What I've Learned About Blogging As a Career

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If you ever see a job opening for Chief Blogger, you might want to run far away. Kodak appointed a Chief Blogger position to a long-time employee, but the job description stinks of non-blogging tasks. Kodak is spindoctoring the announcement by saying that few companies have Chief Bloggers, and fewer still have female Chief Bloggers. So what? "Chief Blogger" hardly seems in the spirit of blogging, and ensures that I'll NOT be visiting company blogs who have such positions.

This recalls to my mind numerous corporate jobs in the mid- to late 90s - when the Internet was the next big thing - that used to be titled Webmaster but were really just PR (Public Relations) jobs. Such jobs often involved immense amounts of company politics while the people doing the real work (the real Webmasters) were scapegoated by executives for anything that didn't go right. (I happened to have been one, and have seen others go through it. It's not a pretty thing.)

Let's hope that this doesn't happen to blogging. I fear, though, that it will. Things to fear: when that executive in the corner office comes asking, "Why isn't the blogsite pulling in a million visitors a day yet? It launched a week ago. How long is it going to take, and how much money will we make from the blog?"

Am I overreacting? What do you think?

After browse-reading Yaro Starak's very informative and very free 55-page ebook Blog Profits Blueprint, the thought came to me that maybe most of us bloggers should not be expecting to experience blogging as a full-time career. Have I lost my mind? Well, I haven't kept it a secret from people that know me that other aspects of online work have been beckoning to me lately. And despite my love of blogging, I've been looking into these alternatives to pad out my online activities. Maybe you should, too. Why? Well, consider the diagram labelled "Core Expectation".

The diagram shows some of the revenue streams that the average new blogger can expect. There really isn't much, is there? How hard do you have to work to get to the point where you can earn at least a part-time living, if not a full-time living? Yaro mentions that he now works maybe a few hours a day writing at most one post per day. Nice. He also admits it took him more than two years to get there.

Now while you have the advantage of Yaro's advice in the ebook, not to mention all the great blogs about blogging, you still have to establish yourself, get yourself to the point where you have enough traffic to support a reasonable income. Even with all the advice you can find, it's still going to take the average blogger a year or longer. Some will never get there. Unless you go the for-hire route that I have.

I enjoy it. I've been a contractor/ freelancer for a very long time and I know the highs and lows and ups and downs. But many of you probably want to work for yourself. What if we're all looking at this blogging thing wrong? Maybe we should not expect blogging to produce the core revenue streams. Maybe there's another way that still involves blogging.

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