“Going Pro” or “Did I just jump off a cliff?”
Like Darren, our 6-figure blogger, and Liew CF, I’ve quit my job and gone pro. Of course, being a TA at Cornell University part time isn’t high-paying employement, but it is a steady flow of cash. Unlike famous pro-blogger Kottke, I’m not a full-time anything so don’t get your hopes up. My goal is to continue blogging the same things as before, as well as playing with some niche content blogs to boost overall earnings.
In an interview with Apple computers yesterday, I was asked why there are advertisments on my blog. My interviewer and his team of brilliant well-paid designers and programmers were all bloggers themselves, sans ugly advertising. Unfortunately, I am a student with bills to pay and this is now my only source of income. So, we’ll make an agreement:
1) I will continue to have advertising on my sites
2) I will do my best to keep this advertising within reasonable and innocuous limits
That said, what’s my short term plan for growth? There are a few things I need to do:
1) Identify content market segments which are highly popular on a long-term basis, and thus highly profitable
2) Develop content or services for #1
Of course, this is identical to the formula for developing a successful startup, so it is probably harder to solve than just that. However, I can acquire popularity data and do regression analysis on different internet content sites to figure out which markets I should enter. I have my eyes on consumer electronics, music, video, and entertainment, photography, and poetry.
One problem I have is that it’s hard to run a one-man empire. How can I challenge weblogsinc with just 2 hours a day? Let’s just say… fall break is coming!
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2005 at 6:50 am and is tagged with niche content, university part time, regression analysis, entertainment photography, market segments, cornell university, content market, apple computers, fall break, employement, steady flow, advertisments, term basis, internet content, interviewer, blogger, music video, bloggers, programmers, earnings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
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