Well, What Do I Do Now?

The invariable question came up from one of my friends the other day that, if my ability to support myself via blogging (or some other independent means) becomes a reality, what would I do all day?  It struck me as a bit of an odd question, since the underlying assumption that writing a blog is passive income requiring little effort.  The reality, as espoused on many of the reality-check sites about Making $8 Gazillion a Year through a Blog is that blogging isn't as easy as it first appears.  

First, you need to generate a lot of content.  If the research highlighted in my previous posts is to be believed, it's approximately 1400 words per day.  I'll assume that's per workday, so that winds up being 100,000 words every 70 or so days. How daunting is this number?  That's approximately a 400-page novel every three months (accounting for the ~20 days of weekends over 3 months).

Then, once you have content, you have to make sure that it's something that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithms (Google and the like - well mostly just Google) can find.  Before doing further research, it's my understanding that by producing enough rich (whatever that means) content, your blog posts don't require SEO tweaking.  SEO tweaking is its own beast that essentially means you have to structure your writing with enough (TikTok) popular (GenZ) words (social distancing) that search engines will pick up on hot topics and move them to the top of search results.  Search engines are also smart enough to realize when you're attempting to game the system.  So, no matter how many times I repeat TikTok here, I'm not getting to the top of the search results page.  And therein lies the definition of rich content (sort of) - what would you rather read?  A page that just simply lists the words TikTok 1000 times or this page (don't answer that).

Then, once you've got SEO-friendly content, you need to continue to cultivate a user base that actually finds your posts at least somewhat captivating.  Otherwise, advertisers aren't likely to care much about paying you for eyeballs if those eyeballs are disinterested or looking elsewhere.

Then, you have to hope that some other medium - like TikTok - doesn't completely erase your business plan based on blogging.  This one is a bit of fear-mongering on my part, since, despite all calls that so-called newer generations have shorter attention spans, humans will be humans for several thousand years to come and will also likely continue to read.

So, blogging isn't necessarily easy, unless you simply want to write useless tripe that gets written out regardless of whether or not anyone's reading it (ahem!).  But let's set those assumptions aside, and pretend for a moment that the blogging business is easy.  

As of this moment, would I have enough to do to keep myself from succumbing to boredom?  Let's make a list.  I'm going to assume that I'm replacing an 8 hour day and, that the things I already do outside of that 8 hours now are either expanded (playing guitar) or not considered (I'm lucky enough to make sufficient time for exercise now, so that's not something I'd do with extra time).

• Blog writing and editing.  As I mentioned in previous posts, at 1400 words with no research needed, this will still require about 2 hours of my day.
• The business of blogging.  I'm not entirely certain what this entails, but I'm sure it will require some comment moderation, probably checking in ads and affiliate links, working to tweak some SEO, etc.  For now, let's assume its 1 hour.
• Research.  This could take up an additional 2 hours per day, easily.
• Guitar.  Typically, I try to devote 15 minutes of my day to practice.  An additional 1 hour would certainly be nice.
• Cooking.  I do devote time to this already, but certainly having an extra hour in the kitchen would open up possibilities.

We're already at 7 hours.  If you're in a knowledge worker type field - like I am - then you've pretty much already reached your daily limit (unless you're seriously self-deluded and think you work without respite for 10 hours a day. And, no, meetings don't count).  I'm sticking to knowledge worker as my paradigm, because there's usually a lot of downtime at a typical office job that doesn't apply to other positions.

And that's just the opening salvo.  I can always add more reading, more exercise, mild software consulting, more foreign language learning and a lot of other things into the mix.  These are all things I've been doing for years and things I'm not likely to burn out on.  And many of these things can be income generating (making music, language tutoring, and consulting) even if it's only $50 or $100 a month.

Now, you may look at all of this and scoff.  "Those aren't really things you can rely on to keep yourself busy," or "that isn't real work."  Maybe.  But certainly between writing full-time and attempting to indulge myself in something creative and, potentially, helping out with programming projects sure seems like a productive use of time to me.

If you're the type that swings a hammer or is on your feet all day, and you're one of the scoffers, I get it.  In one form or another, I've had to do those jobs for limited amounts of time.  If you want to talk about work with a capital 'W', those are the types of jobs that definitely qualify.  If you're someone who's a software engineer, or office manager, or derivatives trader and tell me I'm either being lazy or pissing my life away, we'll you're wrong, since it's very hard to define what peak productivity is for those positions.

We've generally been conditioned as a society to tie our self-worth to our jobs, our income, and, worst of all, the hours we work.  We never actually stop to think about what we're doing and why we're doing it other than to say something distractedly about "wanting the entire experience" or "living our best life" or "gotta power through."  People who don't live up to our ideals of work, we label as lazy or inconsequential.  This is somewhat ironic, given the workers' movements to reduce work hours to something reasonable and John Maynard Keynes's concern about what we'd be bored silly when we eventually succumbed to the 15-hour workweek (which is nowhere in sight for most of the population).

So, if I do, by some fashion - most likely through a fair amount of hard work - have the ability to begin to earn income via my blogging activities, and you're someone who finds that trite, then take heart.  I've got the self-direction and career arc I've been craving for a while, and you can wallow in the glory of knowing I'm lucky, listless, fool.  If I fail in my travails, you can wallow in the glory of knowing I'm simply a fool, and I can be proud that I made an effort at a task I genuinely enjoy, was able to improve my craft, and likely add new perspectives to future situations simply by jotting my thoughts down.  Either way, we both win!