by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: February 15, 2009

Blogging is an activity which I would have to say I stumbled in to rather than actively decided to participate in. I had started writing professionally on the Web on a part time basis and was hearing more and more about the activity known as blogging and the potential revenue producing factors which it held. I saw an advert for a guide to blogging e-book one day at what I believed was an excellent price, clicked to download it and began following the suggestions it contained.

I have to admit that this was a disaster and even to this day it still taints my impression of blogging and what can - never mind is likely to - be achieved from it. The biggest disaster was that it recommended I set up a WordPress blog. I found the experience extremely confusing, restrictive, user unfriendly and demoralising, to name but a mere few of the plethora of adjectives I could readily apply. I was totally disheartened, soon deleted the blog and did not even contemplate further exploring the practise for many months. To this day, I would not even consider the possibility of setting up a blog with this horrendously complex hosting site.

It was when setting up Google AdSense on one of my websites that I came across Google's own blog hosting site, Blogger. I decided to at least have a look at it and see what potentially it could offer in the way of blogging tools and possibilities. What a difference! I found it extremely user friendly, it offered attractive templates from which to choose one for my blog and it gave me back some confidence in the possibilities blogging could offer. I now have about six blogs on Blogger and update most or them on the regular basis generally required.

Today.com is a fairly new blogging concept which I was invited to try. It is different from most other sites in that it potentially pays the blogger simply for the act of blogging, as well as on an ongoing basis based upon the number of page views received. The blogger sets up his or her blog in the first instance and submits their first post for review, which must be of a minimum of one hundred words. If this post is approved for quality - and most of mine have been - the blogger earns a payment of $1.00. It is possible to earn once in this way each day for the first thirty days of the existence of the blog. After that time, the blog is reviewed for overall quality and the potential payment rate either increased or decreased accordingly.

I have therefore overall had some of my confidence in blogging restored after my intitial disaster but don't think it could ever be something which I would take to with anything approaching significant enthusiasm.

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