The Cosmopolitan Blog

Does no one write a blog these days, just for the sheer fun of it? It seems everyone is trying to make money from it. Case in point: me I would love to tell you that i started this blog in the hope of making the world a better place. After all, i preach all this stuff about pacifism and going green, right? Surely that means that i’m a vegetarian, i take in strays, i don’t wear leather, i go on hunger strikes… ok, ok, fine, i’ll stop, i won’t give in to clichés

Here’s the sad truth: I started this blog with an ulterior motive…. or 2… First, well, i was given the task of starting a corporate blog at my workplace, and so, i wanted a testing ground and started this blog as a marketing experiment. I figured, well, how difficult could it be, right? I’m opinionated, passionate, i watch a lot of movies, read a lot and go out for dinner a lot, so surely, that’s enough content for a blog.

Then, shortly after, someone pointed me to Steve Pavlina’s site, this guy writes great articles about personal development, things like: “how to train yourself to get up right away as soon as the alarm rings” (c’mon, be honest with yourself, you can relate!), “lessons we can learn from star trek” (ok, don’t laugh, i agree this one’s a bit more of a stretch, but hey, i’m a trekkie, so sue me!), the latter suddenly upping my respect for the man (steve, that is). All this led me to this post of his: “How to make money from your blog“. Not that this was a revelation, obviously, i knew people did, but i figured, well, if it’s a low effort job, surely it’s not a bad thing to get paid for doing something you enjoy, right? So this was my second ulterior motive, to see if i could make money from it. I’ll report back on the progress of this later on.

So, the answer is, yes, i’m sure there are people out there who do it just for the fun of it, and all the more power to them. But the bottom line is, if your content is compelling, people won’t mind if, next to this riveting content, they see a few ads. I’m not posting for the hell of it (trust me, i would get bored so quickly, this blog would already be over), i am actually, truly and genuinely opinionated and have things to get off my chest…

Anyway, since this is in the “Blogging Around” category, i wanted to just follow up on this whole “making money” business… There’s this guy, One Man, who i find a lot easier to read than Steve Pavlina (although, back when Steve started his site, there was probably less info, and easier to follow than now, where i’m reading his stuff 2 years after it was written, so lots of catching up to do). So One Man has this goal, to make $100,000 in one year from his blog. Check out his site: http://www.oneyeargoal.com/welcome-to-oneyeargoalcom/, he only started in July of this year, so it’s great to track his progress. And proof that making money can have an altruistic spin to it, he shares everything he does, step by step, with you… There are some really interesting tips, and this is easy stuff. So i’ll let you know what i find interesting and will probably be implementing some of it too…