The $14,436.45 that Got People Talking

Well after a couple of days away speaking on a conference (where I could only access the web via dial up for a few minutes per day) I’m back home to survey my blog’s status.

I always seem to time my going away for a few days (or longer) to those times when my blogs seem to be ‘hottest’ and this time was no exception.

ProBlogger.net has been something of a frenzy the past week with links in Aussie Newspapers, from prominent bloggers through to the infamous slashdotting.

The results of such attention have been quite amazing. There are many trackbacks to follow up – my inbox is full of requests from bloggers wanting links, consulting, advice etc (please don’t be offended if I take a while to reply and if I can’t help at this time) – readership here is way up on normal (peaking on Sunday at around 60 times the ‘normal’ levels and calming down today to 5 times normal) – hundreds of new readers have subscribed to my weekly newsletter (I’ll write it tomorrow hopefully).

It seems that everyone has something to say about my earning $14,436.45 from blogging. The opinions are just so varied and the conversation around it is actually quite rich. Whilst there have been a few unpleasant comments and emails in the main the response has been incredibly positive.

I thought I’d point you to some of the conversations and comments the past few days have:

• Scrivs writes Getting Rowse Money – ‘You must keep in perspective how long Darren has been doing this and how frequently. Could you honestly put in 12 hours a day, 6 days a week? I know I couldn’t. I would simply go insane. But think if you did?’

• 282 people ‘dug’ the story at digg with an array of comments ranging from wondering how I’ll spend it through to doubting it can be done.

• rianjs.net writes – ‘I must have read every ProBlogger.net article on making money blogging, and most of it’s pretty reasonable and doable, if you have the time to devote to actually writing.’…

• Escape Velocity makes some good comments about my ‘secrecy’ on which of my blogs make the most money (maybe I am being a little paranoid – not that there is really any real secret if you’re willing to dig into ProBlogger a bit.

• Warren Kinsella writes – ‘This guy says he makes ten big ones a month blogging. Not sure I believe it. There’s the faintest whiff of Ponzi scheme, here. Or is there?’

• Jermexpress writes – ‘It surprised me as I never believed that one can actually make a living from blogging. It’s one dude in a million but his success is proof that one can really have fun and live well if you put quality efforts into whatever you’re doing.’

• Retire Young and Wealthy writes – ‘…I don’t know if I could put that much effort into blogging. I would prefer to maintain a website, that you don’t have to keep adding entries to and doesn’t require too much maintenance.’ You’re not the only one – I’d love to have a passive income from a static site too – however the fact is that very few sites ever do achieve this. Search Engines like fresh content these days so sites that don’t update don’t tend to rank well over time. The idea of ‘easy money’ online isn’t one I subscribe to.

• Andrew says he’s not calling me an ‘outright liar’ but does write – ‘I am calling bullshit on guys like this (links to Problogger). I don’t buy it. Call me jealous, call me skeptic, call me whatever…but I am not going for it. When a company that has 75 some-odd targeted blogs, and a working staff, is happy to pull down $1,000 per day on Adsense, I am not ready to hop on the $15,000/month from three sites bandwagon just yet.’ Ok Andrew – let me spell it out again. I have 20 blogs. I earn the majority of my income of three of them but they all contribute to the overall figure. If you’d like to pop around and check out my cheque stubs from Google I’d be more than happy to show you. I’m getting a little over people not calling me a liar…

Other mentions included Site-9, My Money Blog, Blog Herald, Genuine Blog, Blogging Tom, WebKEW, GoldGrad, L’actu des Blogs, Poynter, Synastry and Sierralog (some of those might a little translation).

Thanks for the many words of encouragement and links (these are just some of the more recent ones to send traffic and trackbacks).

Now let’s get back to blogging…