I picked up this story from Weblog Tools Collection and am glad that Michael Parsons of Times Online asserts that successful blogging is hard work. (quotes are taken from Michael Parsons article)

His article is especially useful to those mass produce bloggers who copy and paste articles about making money and loudly proclaim that one can make money without any efforts. I am sure all of us are so familiar with the mushrooming number of new blogs which claim how easy it is to earn money by just signing up a free blog account and pasting some Google Adsense code to it.

Yesterday someone gave a few simple steps on how to make money through blogging. Unfortunately, I had to butt in and told the blogger that it is not as easy as get a blog, register with a few paid post companies, sign up for Google Adsense and Text Link Ads and start to make money.

It is :

1) Think and see if you have what it takes to survive in this competitive blogsphere;

You need a big ego, a loud voice, and a thick skin. And you need to burn with a restless intensity that makes people want to come back and see what you’ve got to say.

2) Then only start a blog;

3) Forget about any money making promises;

Blogging is a performance art, like juggling. Some people can do it very well, but have you ever tried to manage a troop of jugglers?

4) Write, write and get to know other bloggers;

Like all people who rise to the top of their profession, it demonstrates a simple truth: good bloggers work like dogs. You can’t expect readers to show up unless you show up.

5) When you have decent traffic and reasonable content, then only start to dream

It takes amazing focus and energy not only to drink from the fire hose of content that is the World Wide Web and make sense of it, but also to direct your own little water pistol back at it and actually get noticed.

What the probloggers forget to tell you is Step 1 to Step 5 probably takes more than a year and for some, two to three years. So, enough of the rose tinted idea that blogging can make money! I am still waiting for Step 5.

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Basics for beginners, Blogging, Make Money