Yes. Is that a problem?
Category: Blogging (Page 5 of 7)
These are posts on blogging from the blog Base and Superstructure. Mostly these are meta-blogging posts, where I’ll be writing a bit about what it’s like to run a blog.
After more than 2 years and a couple hundred posts, there’s a lot of content here on Base and Superstructure! Occasionally people ask me where they should begin. They want to know what to read first.
I’ve got enough anarchist in my political background that it’s a weird question. I think anywhere works. But that’s pretty unhelpful. Posts here cover related issues, and more recent posts build on earlier ones. Later posts where I use words in novel ways might be a bit disorienting to people who didn’t read the earlier ones.
And so, here’s my best recommendation. I’ve used the ‘categories’ function to sort the posts in this blog. I included a category called ‘Foundations‘ for those background posts I repeatedly build upon. Just click ‘Foundations‘ and then start reading from the beginning. Luckily there aren’t too many posts. I think only 7 or 8 at this point. So, it shouldn’t be all that large a reading load.
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Not much? Blogging hit its height about 10 years ago. But people can still make money on it through affiliate marketing, ads, etc. I do these things. And I have both a Patreon and an offer for freelance work.
However, blogs that make money tend to be ones that hit solid marketing topics or topics that are widely popular. Leftist blogging is a bit narrow, though. I cover topics with a good audience, but a relatively small one. If you’re looking to make big money, you should pick a different topic.
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OK, so I actually get this question more than I expected when I started the blog. The short answer: No.
The longer answer: Not yet, anyway. So far, I’ve written all content on the blog. I’m open to the possibility of a guest post. In fact, I’d love to see it. But I believe writers should be paid for their work. Even for more causal blog writing, I’d like to see writers getting paid 5-10 cents per word.
So, if I invited someone to do a 1000-1500 word guest post, I’d want to pay them $50-150 to do so. At the moment, I’m not really prepared to pay that kind of money for guest bloggers. I’ll probably say a bit more about the blog’s financials in a future FAQ. For now, let’s just say I’m not pulling in the kind of cash needed to pay people that much to write. Since I can’t pay, I’m not yet allowing guest posts.
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I’ve answered a few FAQs in my yearly blog anniversary posts. But I’d like to dedicate a series of posts to just an FAQ section. Welcome to that series! Here’s the first post.
People sometimes ask me why I decided to start a blog. As with many bloggers, I don’t have a single answer to this one. But I can think of a few reasons. Probably the biggest reason I made a blog is that I just wanted a creative outlet and place to organize some of my thoughts. I’ve worked on a lot of things related to politics, activism, and the social implications of these things. And I needed a way to put it all together. Why not a blog?
Another reason is that I wanted to see what it would be like to write for a living. Is it possible to be a working writer in 2020? If so, is it possible for someone who’s not a freelance journalist or staff writer for a magazine?
Finally, a third reason is that I kinda wanted to write another book. But I didn’t really know what my topic would be. Forcing myself to write each week pushed me to see what I really cared enough about to write a book on.
