What a Year of Blogging for Free Brought Me

I started Paul Shirey Tech on December 8th, 2011. When I started it, I had taken a one month leave of absence blogging after deciding that my previous project, Paul’s Daily Blurbs, just wasn’t working for me. Paul Shirey tech had a new, more professional look and feel to it and I had all intention of boosting up ad revenue, comments, shares, traffic, etc. Here I am a year and then some later, and while that has happened to some extent, the revenue hasn’t reached the level of something I could make a living off of, I’ve generated one $100 payment from Google Adsense since i started this blog, and I have a balance of around $50, making this blog essentially worth $250 in terms of monetary value when you count my initial start-up costs.

Can I say I’m disappointed with those results? Ask me a month ago and I would have said yes, I was very disappointed with those results. However something happened that actually made this blog a heck of a lot more valuable than I would have thought.

As some of you know, I do a lot of my work on Elance. I’d mainly been doing transcription simple because those are the easiest first jobs to get, and there’s good money. However, I don’t really enjoy Transcription, so I decided to look for some paid writing jobs. I can across a client who had a new Android blog and was looking for paid writers. I submitted my proposal, and when he asked for samples, I simply gave a link to my blog, that’s all it took. The content on my blog that hadn’t provided me with much revenue at all, had just given me a paid writing job at PimpMyRom.

About a week into the writing job at PimpMyRom, I determined that there was still time do more, so I decided I wanted to branch out and try to acquire an additional paid writing job. I soon came across someone who was looking for a technology writer to start with 6 paid articles, and then if those were good it would become a long-term position. Now I’m a technology editor in the making at online news magazine 3 Kilograms.

So what has developing a name for myself and writing well produced and thought out content for a year brought me? It’s brought me 2 confirmed paid writing jobs, which let’s put it this way, are worth way more than the coffee it takes to write all those blog posts. I also have a guest writing position at T3KD that will potentially be turning into a paid writing position next year.

How to Get a Paid Writing Job

Talk to me a month ago, and I would have thought the idea of getting a paid writing job on a blog was near impossible. It’s actually easier than you think. As long as you have a passion about what you are writing about, a paid writing job can come to you very easily. I do recommend blogging, and make sure that the blog posts on your personal blog as good as you can make them. Build a name for yourself, and be confident. If you really want to be a paid blogger, and your content is good, it will come.