As a career choice, blogging has yet to take off financially. That lack of hard cash is changing, however. Blogging will soon join other writing professions, and be rewarded monetarily.
More businesses, non-profit organizations, individuals including polticians, business leaders, and celebrities, and even government officials and departments are adding blogs to their communications and public relations efforts. As this phenomenon develops, opportunities for blogging professionals will begin to crop up overnight.
That means freelance, contract, and full time writing jobs for many bloggers.
It won't just mean writing opportunities for the biggest name bloggers either. While the best known bloggers will probably be the first to be skimmed off for other projects, that still leaves many lesser known bloggers to join the ranks of professional bloggers.
I expect the main objection to the professional blogger concept will be that the millions of bloggers will destroy the market. That supply number is misleading.
Not all of those millions of bloggers will be interested in writing blogs for other individuals and organizations. In fact, the number of blog writers applying for the new career will probably be very limited.
I am not concerned that supply will outstrip demand by a very large margin. As with all markets, there will be an eventual price equilibrium taking effect.
The rates for payment, to the new class of professional bloggers, will find a standard pricing range over time. As with any incomplete market information system, there is room for some over and underpayments as well. With that in mind, buyers and sellers of blogging services will have to do their pricing homework.
Even as a part time freelance project, professional blogging can add some handy ready cash to a blogger's pockets.
There are certain to be full time, as well as very part time and casual paid blogging positions.
As more businesses and higher profile individuals recognize the power of blogs for their public relations campaigns, more blogs will appear.
Today's individual bloggers may become tomorrow's well paid Professional Bloggers.
There are definitely some much worse employment options available than becoming a paid blogger. In the case of blogging, it's a matter of doing something you love, and getting paid to do it.
That sounds like a great idea to me.
As with most ideas blogging related, I expect Trudy Schuett to be leading the way.
