On your way to be a Pro-Blogger?

During our last Pinoy.Tech.Blog meet-up at the Podium, I asked Migs what he thinks a “Pro-Blogger” is? He said “if you blog about stuff you don’t really care about. If you blog about something you like, and even if you earn $15,000PHP 880,283INR 1,271,247EUR 14,285CNY 109,175 a month, then you’re an “amateur” in the original sense – for the love.“.

Success stories on pro-blogging have inspired a lot of bloggers into becoming pro-bloggers as well.

I have been doing some research on blog networks and “blog empires” lately and looked at the topics of focus blogs they maintain. Though a lot of them are into general interests such as gadgets, sports, entertainment and gaming, the list extends to the uninteresting yet high value topics such as credit cards, mortgage loans, cancer, medicine and outsourcing. This is what Migs was talking about, blogging about topics that do not interest you. Pro-bloggers loved to blog about these topics because these are the ones that rake in better ROI. I believe this attitude is what separates the entrepreneurial probloggers from the (earning) casual blogger.

Is pro-blogging really for everyone?

Darren Rowse shocked the blogosphere when he first announced his ~$15,000PHP 880,283INR 1,271,247EUR 14,285CNY 109,175 a month Adsense revenue (he already again surpassed that with a $16K revenue for August). Even if you get just 10% of that, $1,500PHP 88,028INR 127,125EUR 1,428CNY 10,917 a month from AdSense can motivate every (Pinoy) blogger to do the same.

The Malaysian tech blogger Liew Cheon Fong has recently announced he quit his job to become a full-time Pro-Blogger. (He claims to be earning at least RM1,000 or $250PHP 14,671INR 21,187EUR 238CNY 1,820 a month from AdSense alone.) I took preferential notice of his blog because, in many ways, his situation would closely represent a Filipino blogger taking the same career path in blogging.

His journey into the pro-blogging world will be a test-case for everyone and I am sure that a lot of his readers are in the wait-and-see position.

Darren has a more comprehensive post about “When is it time to ‘Go Pro’ as a Blogger?” here.