Professional Blogger Association – Some Observations

I’m really happy to see the caliber of Professional Bloggers Association’s Founding Team Members – whilst some have critiqued having such an association I’m pleased that it seems to be moving ahead. They’ve named a board and voted on office bearers which is a good first step and now have a lot of work to do to get it up and running.

This might seem like I’m having a go at them, I’m not in fact I’ve offered my full support and assistance in any way I can a couple of times now. I believe in the ideas of pro bloggers coming together – however I would give one initial observation of the group that have kicked this thing off.

Whilst Paul mentions that they are international in their scope I’m left wondering whether this is really just a north american association. Yes they have Hans on the team (and there could be another European or two in there that doesn’t say so on their bio) but the vast majority of those on the founding membership list are from the US with a few from Canada.

Ok – let me critique my own observation.

• Of course this is only a founding membership list and it would make sense to have the initial group clustered together to help with the logistics of setting up the process.
• Yes the majority of pro-bloggers probably do live in the US.
• The founding membership needs to be of a high caliber/profile – again the US and Canada has a lot of pro bloggers that fit this bill
• Yes it would make good business sense that pro bloggers in a region would want to network together…..

I understand and affirm all these things – however would suggest that blogging is a medium (and pro blogging as a subset of it) that crosses all borders, genders, ethnicities, skin colors and ages. I’d guess I’d like to hope that a group that seeks to represent, support and advocate for such a diverse group of people will take some steps to reflect its diversity from the ground up.

Anyway – its early days for the PBA and I honestly am looking forward to how it unfolds. I’m still interested to know how they will define ‘professional blogger’ (which will probably answer my pondering of whether I will join or not).

Like I’ve said before ‘Pro blogging’ is a pretty wide term and is being used to talk about everyone from ‘business blogs’ to ‘blog consultants’ to ‘bloggers who make money from their blogs directly’ to ‘those who provide blog tools/services’ for blogging.’

I personally have a pretty wide definition of Professional Blogger – anyone who earns (or attempts to earn) a significant part of their income from their blogging, whether that be directly from their readership, from their consulting clients, from their advertisers, from their business (ie it is a job or part of their job), from the sales of books that came about out of their blogging etc….

I qualify the statement with ‘attempts to earn’ because everyone starts somewhere. I think Problogging is partly about a state of mind. I also say ‘significant part of their income’ because I don’t think it includes the many hobby bloggers who have an ad or affiliate button or two on their blogs and make a few dollars every now and again.

One of their first tasks I guess will be giving some scope and boundaries to the group. I’ll be watching on with interest.

Update: Have been pondering this a little more this morning and wondered if another addition to the core team might be a Pro Blogger who makes money directly from their blogs. I guess I’m thinking about Nick or Jason type or one of their offsiders. The spread of people on the initial team covers everything from consultants, to PR bloggers, to marketers, to bloggers associated with businesses that blog, to blog tool/service people – but not seeing too many actually doing the magazine style thing….just another thought….