From Wall Street to Main Street to Blog Street

Posted by JR on November 25 at 1:55 PM I have been a blogger all my life. Well, since my first year in college at least. I blogged my bloggy heart out from Diaryland, to Livejournal, and finally to Blogger (and of course DMD Insight!)

Since the day I first picked up a blogging pen, I've done it for free. I've never looked for profit or even to break even. Of course, to break even when you blog for free is to essentially not spend any money. Lucky for me that blogging is completely free. It's a wonderful thing. All it costs is your time and typing to throw your opinion out into the Internet.

But maybe I have this all wrong. Lots of people depend on blogging as their income. And, in these tough economic times, they, too, are feeling the hurt. How lucky for them that Six Apart and TypePad are offering a Blogger bailout program.

Now don't get too excited. You're not getting even half of a billion dollars, and it's not coming from the government. What you DO get is:

- A free TypePad Pro account
- Professional tech support,
- Placement on Blogs.com, and
- Auto-enrollment into Six Apart's revenue-sharing ad network.

The complete package is worth about $150 per user per year.

Here's the catch: It's only available to 20 or 30 bloggers! And, knowing how we writers are quick to dive for anything free, these spots are surely gone by now.

So allow me to offer our own version of the Bailout Plan, DMD Insight style. Come blog with us! Do you blog on technology? PR? Advertising? Drop us a line in the comment form and I will personally take your plea to the higher ups.

Sure, we can't pay you (they don't pay us to blog!) But you can still do what you love to do: blog, opine, and criticize. And isn't that what it's all about? I mean, c'mon! It's $150! You can make that working a shift at Starbucks (if the tips are high enough).

In the end, I think this is rather silly. Yes, I have friends who blog for profit but, really, is that how it should be? Paid to blog? It taints the water, sullies the message. I blog for free and am therefore beholden to no one. And the concept of a $150 bailout seems to me to be a joke more than an honest solution. If bloggers are losing their jobs, tech support and a free blog (blogs are free! they're free i tell you!) aren't going to cut it.

I feel like the blogosphere may be our next Web bubble. Gone are the dinosaur electronic catalogues of the olden days, leaving behind the powerful behemoths like Amazon and Ebay (which is also suffering). Gawker has grown too huge any way. They began to launch blogs left and right to get more ad revenue (hey guys! let's write a blog about gum! yeah! all about gum! Wrigley's will surely buy up the banner space). This isn't the end of blogging, it's a reality check.

I have no interest in reading the words of a perfectly assembled blogging team. I'm more interested in the ramblings, rantings, ravings and ravishings of a man sitting in his basement before he goes to work his night shift at Pizza Hut. THAT is what blogging is about. It's about the people who do it to do it, not those who do it to make it big.
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