I am a web designer and have been messing around on the net long before the days of the web – my first modem was 2,400 baud. So I guess that qualifies me to have some opinion on the way things have developed over the years. I don’t purport to be a ‘guru’ on the Internet and cyber-culture (actually it’s just a bulsiht phase used by the ‘Internet marketers’ – the type that used to plague the paper classified sections prior to the digital age…), though I would guess I´m way closer to that title – which I hate – than most of the readers of this site. Disagree? I don’t care…

I was prompted to start this blog after someone I know, a friend, announced he was going to become a ‘professional blogger’ and ‘Internet marketer’ – it prompted me to set myself a challenge that may become clearer later – but for now I’m keeping it to myself.

Lets take a look at the notion of the ‘professional blogger’. Yes there are some around. A good number of Intenet users are familiar now with the likes of Dooce – not my kind of thing, but I can see how Heather Armstrong has been s she’s a good writer, and has a sense of Style… Whether its worth the money she makes I guess that’s for her readers to decide. The point is she’s not just some sad jerk sat in their back bedroom convinced they are going to be a million dollars in 12 months if they write about how to make money writing blogs when they actually don’t have a clue what they are doing – they are just regurgitating crap from so called experts selling bogus freely available information via the likes of Clickbank.

On the other side of the coin is the talentless people who think the world’s Interent users are interested in their daily lives… A trip to the store with mom, the story of their (uneventful) pregnancy, or his or hers date last night – you get the picture… Who gives a crap. Not I. But for the purposes of this blog – I am going to read, and comment on a few. many of these people are sucked in by the likes of this guy – suposedly a 23 year old blogging millionaire (notice you don’t see any mention any blogs – and I bet he’s been 23 for a lot longer than a year) – the chances are IF this guy has ever made any serious money its buy persuading people to part with hard earned $’s to buy his unproven ‘expertise’. These guys put me in mind of the medicine men of the old west…

If you really are intent on becoming a blogger – professional or otherwise – you may well do better to just start of with Google, theirs more than enough there (and it’ll probably lead you to any links you’ll find in these paid for pdf ‘reports’… Or, if paper is your thing just buy a book like Blogging For Dummies…

Related posts:

1. What the hell is this blog about…?
2. The good old days…
3. Some people will never get to first base!