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Let's get one thing straight: blogging for money equals a day job. Why would you change your current day job for another? Because it gives you more. More satisfaction, motivation, encouragement. It ignites your passion and it allows you to maintain a certain quality of life.

If you quit your day job and you march home with your cardboard box with all your personals, thinking 'I will create a blog and I will write my heart and brain out. I will devote eight solid hours to my craft, I will set up my google adsense, my adbrite. I will do everything by the book', truth is, you will be disappointed.

Keeping a good and profitable blog requires so much more than just writing and I will name a few extra-writing tasks that might prove that leaving the day job before the right time might be a road to catastrophe.

1. Writing for the web requires research. Long gone are the days when you slipped out a rant from the depths of your troubled soul, when you made affirmations that were non supported, when you got away quoting someone inaccurately, or linking doubtful sources. Blogging or writing for the web today is almost the same as writing for a printed media. Especially if you're writing for money. Credibility is of the utmost importance.

2. Dealing with IT issues: This alone will take much of your time. You need to know how to set up your ads, which ad companies will be best for you and won't discourage your readers. How to maximize the use of your statistics, such as google analytics or your hit and visitor counter.
What other tools do you need, do you need a host? an online photo or file storage application? Does it cost? What about spams? Do you need a paypal account?

3. Marketing your blog. Whoa! Do you know that apart from writing, you need to visit and read and bookmark and comment and link and trackback and tag all over the place (in your niche of course) to get your blog noticed? Blogs need branding as well. You do know who Dooce is don't you? She blogged for a couple of years before she was able to say she supports her family with her writing.

4. Write, revise, rewrite, publish. Long gone are the days when you wrote and published only to visit your own blog and find horrible typos and spelling mistakes? One article will take time, and if you calculate how much money you made from adsense during the first three months, let's say .35 cents vs. the time you spent polishing that article, it's not a very good business to begin with.

5. Public Relations. This is related to Marketing your blog, but I put it separately because of its growing importance in the medium. Events such as BlogHer, South by southwest and other blogging summits, are important to build your brand. It might come later in the game, but just check out the prices to attend one of those conferences. They are not free for a reason.

These are the main areas that you will need to consider while trying to build a blog and eventually switch from your day job to your other day job: blogging for a living, so why not do this a little at a time?
Everybody has some downtime at the cubicle, you can do all this in small bouts of time, without risking your financial stability or facing disappointment.

Learn more about this author, Luisa Fernanda.
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