I am still hoping… against hope… that I can somehow manage to turn my blogging hobby into a paying job, while also increasing the number of people who have access to my novels and children’s books, thereby increasing sales of those without having to actually get an agent and get picked up by a major publishing house… and all without changing what it is I do here on my blog… just doing it somewhere else… if you followed along with all that…
I know, I talked about this stuff in the past, and then chickened out. But this time, my older daughter… who actually knows a little about computers… and my good buddy, Jibber, up in Canadaland, are helping me. That is the only reason I am even looking into this.
Here is what we learned so far.
It turns out that there is a WordPress.com AND a WordPress.org.
Who knew?
The .com does all the work for you and is free, but you can’t make any money. The .org makes you do all the work… backups and plugins and… uh… other stuff that I already can’t remember… but you can make money with ads.
The upside is that you would all still be able to find me easily, and I wouldn’t lose all my followers… except, I assume, the ones who are no longer amongst the living.
The downside is that I would have to pay somebody… or a company… to do all that stuff that I can’t remember, because I am a computer moron. Plus, I would have to pay the .org, I assume.
Oh, and it turns out that it isn’t easy to get people to just pay you to put ads on your blog. Oh no. You get paid when people actually click on the ads. That sucks. When advertisers put up a billboard on someone’s house, do they only pay the people when other people actually look at the billboard?
Anyway, thanks for sticking with me through my experimental journey to become a corporate shill… or stooge… or whatever I might have to end up becoming to prevent me from having to get another minimum wage, soul-crushing job.
Pouring My Art Out 
There is an adwords with .com that you can use although the payment on that is very low. I used to use it until I found out that you get paid after earning $100 and you get paid very little. 8,557 visitors netted $3.74 whilst 8,450 gave $3.73. To make $100 you need billions of people going through.
WordAds not adwords
ha
well, I will have billions sooner or later… right???
Later or sooner, definitely
I’m working on it!
I’m pretty sure you’re more of a stooge than a shrill. I just can’t decide if you are Larry or Curly.
Ha
All the best, unfortunately ads are annoying plus we all wish we could blog instead of going to boring jobs.
But I get sucky underpaid boring jobs, if I could get one at all now
Also, just do it.
I am working on it… Even Jessica is overwhelmed
Canadaland is helpful like that.
Gotta love that Cananadda
I thought about that, too, until my daughter (“Cordelia”) told me that she tried signing up for the paid advertising, and that the money was negligible. Personally, I had an offer to run a “sponsored post” (basically just an ad), and it turned out the “sponsor” was only willing to pay about $10. I suppose if you could get a lot of ads and sponsored posts, it might be worth it, and you have a high enough readership that maybe you could make a go of it. My readership is decent, but not high enough to make me want to turn into an ad whore for maybe $10 every six months.
Yeah… I don’t mind being a whore, but I ain’t gonna be no underpaid one… HA!
I had self hosted for one year, between my current wp.com blog and the end of my previous one.
It isn’t impossible,I didn’t mean to say that earlier, but when you move off of here, it isn’t always as easy for someone to click “follow” and just follow you. that’s where you get a big drop off in followers, but the other side is the ones you have are the loyal ones that read and interact with you.
Spam on the .org platform is a huge issue; akismet was not availalbe for that system when I was on there. It may be now, and there were other plug ins that did the same thing, but not as well.
All this to say, again. Pros and cons to each. Which you already knew, obviously.
May you choose wisely!
uh… yeah… I am famous for my wise choices… sigh…
Waaaaait…I thought Yoko broke up the Beatles.
that’s what the suit guys want you to think…
Whoa!! Yes there’s the click adds you’re talking about but there’s also the option to have people pay you for you to put up adds on your site. There’s also the option for people to pay you to do posts on your sight.
If you look at this as one step at a time it will be easier than looking at the big picture. I also know of a place where if it come to you needing to pay for help with your site it would cost you $5. It sounds like you’re getting really overwhelmed.
There’s also the option to sell and ship your books right from your website. There’s so many options. Also I’m Gibber not Jibber 😉
I know who you are… I like to think of you as Jibber Gabber, not Gibber Jabber… or jibber jabber or gibber jabber… because it cracks me up… and then I forget that I am doing it and accidentally type it in places where it isn’t as funny as in my head. I will pass this on to Jess… even she is getting overwhelmed… which just overwhelms me even more…
Ha! Who is Jess?
my older daughter… Jessica
That’s what I thought. Don’t worry if you decide to stay with WP and use Bluehost it’s not near as complicated as you think. We can chat if you want when you’re done the thing.
Thanks, buddy
You’re welcome. 🙂
Yay
and stop whining or I will start calling you flibber… or flipper… or Bieber… or fibber… or flubber…
Oh man I hear another nick name coming on! Ha!
yup
that’s about what I thought. Making money with a blog sounds good, but it’s not easy…keep thrashing about – something will appear.
I am thrashing away!
I don’t know what to say. Entrepreneurship is never easy Art. Follow your heart.
It isn’t even easy to spell… sigh