My reasons are likely transparent already - I'm interested in generating more content for my blog and, if the gods of capitalism and ad revenue shine on me, possibly even making money from the content.
Let's start with the things I have going for me that could make this venture successful:
1. I write consistently. My formal academic training is in mechanical engineering and computer science, and I've spent the better part of my career as a software engineer or manager of software engineers. One would think that people in these fields aren't prone to writing, and one would be right. If brevity is the soul of wit (huh, this is the second straight blog post I've quoted Polonius from Hamlet), then terseness is the corporate motto. People don't like reading "long" emails (typically defined as 1000 words or more by the number of groans emitted in proximity when said email reaches co-workers' inboxes), much less writing them. If people can't be bothered to take 4 minutes to digest something, they sure aren't going to spend 30 minutes - 1 hour to compose their thoughts. Why write when everything can be solved by a meeting?
I'll leave my rant against meetings and their general uselessness for another day, but, needless to say, I think writing has its place in the breakneck bureaucracy of the modern workplace. By spending time to compose your thoughts, you're forced to analyze what your exact point is. Even a furious response to a perceived email slight will make you pause and check a few points of grammar or points of emphasis before shipment - "Should I simply respond with fuck you to indicate I don't care that much? Should I be more formal and capitalize it (Fuck you) to demonstrate I'm serious about my intent? Should I use all caps to show my passion?" In cases where you may simply blurt out something that may or may not be an untruth - I won't call it a lie, as it may be something you mostly think is true but are either too lazy or intimidated to follow up on at the given moment, a common method for kickstarting projects in a corporate environment - you're more likely to fact check yourself (or at least spend the time to find sources that reinforce your bias) when you're writing.
As a reader, I'm much happier with written communication in almost all cases than I am with a meeting. I can spend more time digesting the writer's intent, I can do it on my own terms at my own speed, and I can do some follow up research independently for points I'm unfamiliar with. If someone barks at me "What's the ETA on the EKS upgrade and what version are we moving to and why?" I only have scant precious moments to come up with a solid answer or, more likely, lightly prevaricate to fill in the gaps. This response makes neither party happy.
(By the way the above section - at least in first draft form - is 532 words after about 25 minutes of writing).
2. I've been trained to write. Despite my STEM education, which is great for a lot of opportunities, but not so much for writing, I also had a strong liberal arts education in high school by being fortunate to participate in the International Baccalaureate program. As an example - I recall being assigned a 500-word assignment in our world history class our senior year every week. This was something I'd crank out every Sunday afternoon as the clock crept towards 4 PM, and wasn't something I sweated. In fact, it probably took me about the same amount of time to complete the paper as it did to crank out the first 500 words of this blog post. At a high school friend's wedding last year I heard a fellow graduate of high professional standing (she's an MD in a research field who has to crank out grants) extoll the virtues of our shared educational background. She exclaimed that it was relatively easy for those of us who went through the IB program to write, because we had to write with frequency for just about every class. Until she'd mentioned that, I'd never thought about why writing came so easily to me. I'd assumed that most people of a certain educational level (certainly research-oriented MDs) could write fluidly. This is apparently not always the case. So, cheers to my word-heavy high school education.
3. I like to write. I mean, hell, I've been writing this blog (among sundry various other works) for a while now. When I put the right phrase together, it's like solving a puzzle. When I can reach someone through my (usually) thoughtful communication and have them understand my point of view or get them to think, I get the same fuzzy feeling as a warm fire in a deep-woods setting on a snowy January night. And yes, that last statement was nothing more than word porn. But, hey, it's my blog, so I can word porn away.
Why I'd fail at this venture:
1. I have a full-time job and a list of hobbies that keep me from writing consistently. If you're paying attention to the posts of this blog, you'll notice that I'm 2/3 of a way through a (hopefully) 50,000-word novel. That novel should be wrapping up right about...oh....now. That novel will likely wrap up sometime around...oh...now...plus another year. Still, the fact that I've been able to get this far is something I should give myself credit for. But I still need to finish.
2. I have a current readership of 1. You know who you are. And I hate marketing my skills. I guess what I'm doing with this post could be considered marketing, but to me it falls more into the camp of self-affirmation, because I don't have any readers. But, give me a straw boater and tell me I need to sing my own praises at the carnival, and I'd as soon jump in the nearest lake. If I can't figure out how to comfortably reach a broad audience, I can't really do this as something other than a mildly voyeuristic diary.
3. You hate my writing. Or are indifferent to it. Writing - as we know it - isn't usually a career that many people consider stable. Good writers are almost literally a dime a dozen. And I mean literally in the old-fashioned sense, not in the new, anything-goes literally sense. And, that's assuming I'm a good writer.
Even if I'm a good writer, I still need to be a popular enough writer. I'm not a fan of some of the greatest writers in the last several hundred years (James Joyce, I'm looking at you). And, I'm a little too old to buy into the starving artist myth, so I need to convince enough of you current non-readers that I'm worth reading.
(Another 25ish minutes, another 599 words - Dr. Downey really did train me well)
So, what's the conclusion? It's readily apparent that I can crank out 500 words on a topic that I wasn't certain I could crank out 500 words on.
According to this blog post (and similar ones echoing the same finding), Medium has suggested that a blog post of about 1600 words hits the SEO sweet spot, which is likely to maximize revenue. People tend to prefer shorter posts (sometimes around 300 words) but are more likely to post an interesting entry on the Twitter or the Zuckerberg Diaries if the piece is longer. That's a bit of contradiction, but I guess it means there's room for both long-form and short-form posts.
OK, so as I wrap this up, it's taken me about one hour to write this post over two sittings in one day. I haven't yet edited it, but that's usually another 15-30 minutes (finishing one pass of editing here - the most I'll do for this post - it did indeed take me about 20 minutes). So, if the less sensationalistic articles are to be believed, then a consistently cultivated blog can make (let's be conservative but in a still outrageous way) $6000/month. That's $6000/month while putting in 8 hours of work a week (1 1/2 hours x 5 days - this is writing class, not math class. Keep up). That's pretty good. Even taking researched topics into account and assuming I need to spend 2 1/2 hours researching for every 1 1/2 hours writing (this is an arbitrary statement, but, meh) the workweek expands to 20 hours/per week. Still not bad.
Now, I don't know what the administrative side of a blogging business requires (maybe it's an additional 30 hours, at which this whole thing falls apart), but the opening proposition is at least intriguing and not nearly as daunting (nor as fantastically easy) as I'd first assumed.
Even at a "paltry" $1000/month for about 40 hours per month, the rate is still $25 - not a horrible side gig.
Maybe it's worth a shot.
(My total here, pre-edit is 532 + 599 + 290 words or 1,421 total. Not bad for roughly an hour's effort.)
(1,587 words after editing - Medium would be so proud.)
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