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Some time ago I bought a copy of ‘Problogger’ by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett, two people who have found a way to make their living by blogging about making money with blogs and online marketing. Rowse currently publishes problogger.net. Chris Garrett is a blogging and internet marketing consultant.

I think their book is a great primer for anyone seriously thinking about trying to make an income from a blog; not because it sells the concept, but because it tosses out the hype and just hands out some straight goods on the subject.

As a matter of fact I like the book a whole lot better than browsing through the information on their websites, or looking for the same information on similar blogs, forums and sites for that matter. Not that there is anything wrong with what is out there, much of it looks like the same stuff that I read in the book. There is just way too much there.

I know I am getting grumpy here. It’s a kind of ‘too much information’ kind of grumpy. I am so tired of marketing, marketing, marketing! I am really tired of all the hype and I am wickedly fed up with all the advice floating around out there. I want information, plain and simple.

Rowse and Garrett likely have to work very hard to make their money online and off. And yes, I do appreciate the way they share and support others who are trying to make some money with their blogs. It’s nice. But they have also written a good book that has helped me to understand where I want to go with my work. Many thanks for that and please note I did buy the book!

So here is my grumpy day strategy:
To make money blogging, just get busy with your blog! Sure go ahead and browse a few how to and marketing pages. Then write, write and write some more. And only after that, pause to find a few fixes for the inevitable wrong turns and missteps that everyone takes. Maybe the money will follow and you won’t end up grumpy like me.

PS; And sorry for adding yet another bit of advice on the subject. sigh. . .

I used to write freelance articles. Almost a decade has slipped by since I made an appointment with the editor of a local community magazine and talked her into giving me an assignment to write a feature length article.

After that I went home and had one of those moments; the one where the inner child screams (like Macaulay Culkin in ‘Home Alone’). Why it only occured to me that I didn’t have a clue about how to do the job until after I got it, who knows? I knew that I wanted to write a novel and remember thinking that I needed much better writing skills before I started one. The non-fiction writing thing was supposed to be an apprenticeship of sorts.

Publication credits in magazines would help me establish a writerly reputation I thought, and maybe even open a door or two at a book publishers when the time came. Ha! Just one more thing I didn’t know.

Anyway back to problem one; that article. It didn’t take long before I went to find help at the local library. The book I needed most was right there when I needed it and the author and I might even be related because we have the same last name.

‘The Writer’s complete Guide to conducting Interviews’ is by Michael Schumacher, who will turn into a race car driver if you google him so I don’t advise it.

I wanted to find out more about him because I’m still truly grateful for his help, but all I can tell you is that the book is out of print now and used copies are listed on Amazon starting at 1 cent. That book covered every detail of what I needed to know about interviewing and gave me more than a few hints about working as a free-lance writer.

Now I wonder does anyone out there want to be a freelance writer anymore? There are plenty of reasons not to do it, but there will always be lots of reasons to want to write. I know I still want to do that.

When I was writing articles or working on a novel I found that I couldn’t keep the writing going and work on my visual art at the same time. If I tried to do both they seemed to want to cancel each other out. I always had to choose; one or the other. Now that I’m blogging one medium is meant to support the other. At least that’s the plan. Here it goes!