#FutureProof
Post 2
Why Start A Blog?
Hey everyone! Hope you’re doing well today. It seems like a good time to think about what the goals of this blog will be, as I’m just getting started, and maybe I’m not the only one starting a blog (or thinking about starting a blog) as a way to make income. But let’s be real: nobody who starts a blog with the sole purpose in mind of making money is going to do very well unless they figure out how to provide something in exchange for the reader’s time and/or tips. So today’s post will be on value creation.
Anecdotally, I actually quit teaching philosophy because I felt undervalued. Here I was, all of this wonderful education under my belt. A handful of publications. Some book ideas. And some students who were very pleased with my class. And yet, my income was nowhere near enough to cover my cost of living. I drove for Uber during South By Southwest here in Austin back in 2016, and made about a thousand bucks more during that single week than I made teaching an entire community college course for a whole semester. Let that sink in! Why did our society value transportation over education?
Since I was a very young man, I’ve always wanted to earn a living by writing. I’ve got a talent for it, won an essay competition in high school and so on. But during my time as a tech entrepreneur, I also realized something that is probably going to turn out to be the key to making this work: value. You cannot decide what the market will value; instead, you have to listen. You have to test. You have to try things and see what ends up working, and then do the thing that works!
It sounds simple enough, but a great many of us simply fail to take this into account as we plan our business decisions and/or our lives.
I’m applying this principle to this very blog, in fact, and you’ll probably see me test different sorts of things and then adapt my writing style to respond to what works.
To begin with, I’ve chosen a topic people care about: how to make money online, and I’ve decided to research and write about this topic. It’s easy enough to see that people want to make money online, that a handful of people get to work from home and that many others wish to be able to do so. And then you have networks like Cent and Publish0x where the entirety of web traffic consists of people who are interested in making a bit of money online even if it’s only a few pennies at a time.
Okay, so we know we need to add value for people to be interested in anything we have to say, for our content to be worth their time in other words. And we’ve found a topic we’re interested in that others are also interested in. Very good. Now comes the research, the waiting, and the hard work of actually going into it and figuring out how to do it so that we can report back and begin earning.
To justify this massive effort, especially in the midst of all of the other projects I have going on, including two novels, one novella (which is in the final stages of editing before publication!) and school, in addition to promotion of two books I’ve already released (find Formal Dialectics here and Further From Home here), I think I need to refresh my memory. What, again, is it that is driving me to do this?
For one thing, I’m motivated to help other people.
I plan to do this by writing up what I find in my quest to support myself. So hopefully there are others out there who can use the information I’ll be providing to help themselves break free from jobs they don’t like or that aren’t fulfilling. That’s cool.
I’ve also always wanted to write quality fiction. You know, the sorts of stories that entertain the audience while also helping them through the difficult parts of life. I like to think they’re philosophical, and so doing this blog will motivate me to write more and get better at it.
There’s another thing that might be benefited by this blog that’s close to me: philosophy. If I can write philosophy that makes sense and helps others make sense too, this blog can help get the word out about an otherwise-obscure academic subject and help the world to start understanding what postmodernism is and what some rudimentary adaptations to it will look like.
I believe, having considered all of these different benefits, that writing this blog is a sound decision for me to make because it benefits everyone involved more than it hurts me to spare the 20-30 minutes it takes to write up a post.
When you see a situation in which the benefits outweigh the pains (or costs), you’re looking at what might be called a value-added situation. Things are improved by doing the action you’re evaluating, and unless you’ve missed something, just maybe it’s a good idea to move forward with it.
Final Thought:
Before you make an investment, even when it’s only your time, it can be a good idea to think through the likely outcome of your decision. If you decide to attempt to make a living online, it is very important to figure out what value you can add to your audience so that your efforts are focused and you don’t burn yourself out before you figure out what people want from you. You’ll always still need to test and tune your approach, but going into it with the right attitude can make a world of difference.
Be sure to stop by my website to have a look around. If you want to, you can sign up for an account there which will let you post comments and even get email notifications when I release new content.
Cheers!
-Dylan
