In a fit of characteristic melodrama, the New York Times has published a story indicating that blogging might just kill you:
hey work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.
Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.
Of course, writers aren’t always the healthiest people to begin with. I enjoy exercise about as much as I look forward to having my first colon cancer screening. And I admit, sometimes the pressure to produce content to keep traffic flowing is enough to make me wake up ten minutes earlier than usual, but generally speaking I really can’t imagine this occasionally compensated hobby o’ mine to be much of a danger. If anything, it’s an outlet for stress and a remedy for terminal boredom.
To be honest, the health aspects don’t really concern me. What’s really interesting is this:
Bloggers at some of the bigger sites say most writers earn about $30,000 a year starting out, and some can make as much as $70,000. A tireless few bloggers reach six figures, and some entrepreneurs in the field have built mini-empires on the Web that are generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Others who are trying to turn blogging into a career say they can end up with just $1,000 a month.
I’d love - love - to get paid any of the above amounts for all of the work I do on the blogs I contribute to. I’ve put countless hours over five years into this, written about 2,000 posts, and heaven only knows how many words. I think that my dream job is to do this every day and get paid enough for it that I can keep my family afloat on the income.
A day may come when that can happen, and if it does, I’ll take the stress and the extra work - gladly. Until then, I’ll give you what I can for free, but I won’t think twice about abandoning you for the nights and weekends.
