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One of the most popular themes of blogging is how to make a living while blogging. Apparently some people make money by blogging about how to make money by blogging. And here I am blogging about people making money by blogging about making money by blogging.
It is like becoming an entrepreneur who offers consulting on becoming an entrepreneur. I don’t say it’s wrong or right; I just feel...awkward. Not about individual bloggers but about the whole blogosphere, filled with discussions and posts regarding this topic.
Blogging on blogging is, in short, (a) consulting to the (b) converted. These two points are where I feel awkward, and I would like to dig deeper into this issue.
Going consulting
Consulting itself is just a job category, maybe even a noble one, if we consider it part of the education industry. But it is never about doing something on our own; it’s about helping others do what they want.
Here, we need to stop and ask ourselves why we started blogging in the first place. It was probably because we wanted to establish our own brand or voice. We wanted to claim our independence, and wanted to make a difference in this world.
Then ask ourselves next: Why do we want to consult? Perhaps we wanted to break out of living our lives fulfilling someone else’s (= our employer’s) dream. Falling into consulting—unless your dream is to become a consultant—seems like going back to square one. Po Bronson, in What Should I Do With My Life?, sums up this question nicely.
Why was I bent on encouraging people to change their lives?...Because I have seen us glorify those who make decisions over those who enact decisions, prefer being a consultant to being fully engaged, being an investor to being invested in, being an advisor over being politically involved, being an expert over being partisan, being a news analyst over being a news gatherer—all in fear of the inflexible boredom of commitment?
Preaching to the converted
Another issue is that the whole consulting thing works mainly inside a small circle of bloggers: people who already share similar ideas and goals as you. But if you go too far in that direction, you are doing a glorified version of scratching each other’s back, eternally staying inside the small community of bloggers. A recent article (or warning) from Hugh MacLeod highlights this issue nicely:
We’ve written blog posts that other bloggers like (especially high-traffic, “A-Lister” bloggers who link to us). And we squealed like happy children when we saw our traffic stats spike up massively.
[...]
But at the end of the day, it’s not the A-Listers or the pajama-clad, Web 2.0 basement-dwellers who are paying your mortgage. It’s the regular shmoes with a regular problem who are willing to pull out their credit cards to get it solved.
We blog to be more authentic and to connect with the world outside our inner circle. I personally would love to see a blogging society in which growing a blog means offering something unique to bloggers and non-bloggers alike, and becoming a consultant is treated as a temporary solution for making ends meet—unless you are destined to become a kick-ass consultant.
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Comments
05.15.10
Great piece Isao! You are definitely right to feel uneasy about this phenomenon. This is what I was getting at in a piece where I wrote satirically:
"Your audience is the most important element, so keep in mind that, for the most part, you are preaching to the choir – most of your readers are other bloggers who write about the same things you do. Do not critically analyze anything – by doing so you risk being critically analyzed yourself." - How to blog about social media, careers and more (http://bit.ly/9dYw6F)
If I may forward a suspicion of mine - you didn't get a whole lot of responses/comments on this post because there is a high-density of meta-blogging meta-doers (not that that's always a bad thing) in the BC community. I don't mean to be negative, but this is worth some examination.
05.16.10
Back in undergrad, when I drooled over every new issue of Countryside (http://www.countrysidemag.com/; "The magazine of modern homesteading"), I found the same problem: Urban transplants can only make enough money to live in the country by hocking their lifestyle to others. And, if you write books about how to live without income... it's hypocritical to the point of ridicule.
A LOT of blogging feels like this, and so do a lot of e-book money-making schemes. I'm pretty sure that, for many of them, the money is made selling these e-books!
Consulting, to me, is something that's undertaken AFTER career success, just like teaching. Plenty of people seem to be training/consulting/advising/coaching others without adding real value themselves, and there's a place for that. But if what you're coaching or training other people to do is be coaches or trainers themselves - and neither of you have experience - you're doing more harm than good, no matter what your bank account says.
That being said - great post!
05.16.10
Tariq, thank you for your endorcement. I feel much better now that I found the way to describe the awkwardness I had always felt - sometime to me.
Although I did not get a great number of comments, I did get two very informative ones from you and Karolyn. Also, there are four tweets - a record number for me - and some people put me into the "fan" basket. I do believe many people took note on this subject. Isn't it great to touch a subject that many people care, whether in a soothing or nerve-pinching way...
05.16.10
Karolyn, yes I share the same sentiment for the flood of ebooks...I can't say anything negative about those books because almost all authors did put their hearts and sweats into them. But too much is too much.
I agree that consultants need to have real-life experiences (been there, done that), although they do not have to be superachievers. I think the ability to extract lessons from business battlefields and the ability to defeat enemies (competitors) are not exactly the same... Anyhow, if every consultant wrote like Guy Kawasaki, the world would be a better place and we will have having fewer but trustable consultants.
05.18.10
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