10 Jobs You Can Do If You’re A Blogger
Google Adsense not paying the bills? What if you could somehow transfer your blogging skills to a Real Job™?. I mean, surely all this time you’ve invested in being a D-class blogosphere celebrity has to make you rich in SOME way right? You would be correct. This is not a guide on how to monetise your blog, this is a list of 10 “real” professions that your writing of a blog makes you very, very tenuously suitable for (in no particular order). Good luck…
1) Marketing Genius
USA. USA. USA.
On your blog you are essentially marketing yourself. You know that your audience appreciates your naked pictures / self-depracting sense of humour / outspoken, obscenity-laden tirades / jokes about your tiny penis - and that’s exactly what marketing is! Knowing how to push an audience’s buttons, using it to your fiscal advantage and reaping the crisp, green rewards.
2) Politician
“icanhascheezburger is teh lolz”
Blogs are a popularity contest and you sometimes have to resort to dirty tactics to get ahead. Not writing compelling content? Audience disappearing? Easily remedied. Do a video broadcast. Post up some pics of yourself holding a cute puppy. Start an aggressive smear campaign against the owner of a rival blog. Spend $$$$$$s hiring a top blog consultant to make your site better than everyone else’s. Start a war against a small sovereign nation for no apparent reason. If you do any of the above with some conviction, your audience will flock back in droves. Well done! You are now ready for a career in politics.
3) Web Designer / Developer
None shall pass.
You know how to write a link without using the shortcut button on your blog’s toolbar? OMG you’re hired! In all seriousness, the boom of blogging has done great things for the web design / coding world. Thanks to open source blog engines that focus on standards-compliance, beginner code monkeys have an excellent, well-documented platform to backwards-engineer, pick apart and learn from when studying the basics of content-driven, dynamic websites.
4) Spy
Bond and his floatation devices
How many of you are a sliiiightly different person on your blog when compared with the “real you”? How many of you are now wondering if I am tantalisingly alluding to the fact that I might actually have a really big penis as opposed to the tiny one I constantly talk about? Part of being a spy is being someone other than the real you. You have to assume an identity. You have to BE that person. Hell, in interrogation situations you might even have to BE that person whilst repeatedly having your balls whacked with a heavy, knotted rope. And that’s pretty much what writing this blog is like.
5) Cult Leader
Do you have a rabid, devoted following on your blog? Perhaps you are one of those girls with thousands of male fans at your beck and call whose opinion you can influence at your whim.
XiaXue: I like puppies!
Male Fans In Unison: OMG I love puppies! They are the awesome.
XiaXue: I hate puppies now. You all have to kill yourselves.
Male Fans In Unison: *stab wildly at their own faces*
Whilst that’s all good wholesome fun, do you realise that you could do the same thing as a cult leader or founder of a new religion and reap crazy profits from it? One writer already has and if you’re a blogger of influence you’d be a fool not to try and squeeze some green and / or sexually exploit the soft, pliable minds of your devoted reader base.
6) Attention Whore
A lot of bloggers plaster their blogs with pics of themselves. You know the kind of pics I’m talking about. Almost completely white from overuse of flash, taken from above, “jus checkin outz mah new hair!!!1 LULZ” - that kind of thing. Paris Hilton has essentially made a multi-million dollar career out of doing EXACTLY THAT. Sure, she’s now a “pop star”, but lets not forget where she got her big fame-boost. That’s right. Leaked, amateur pornography (although she seemed like quite the “pro” in my book, eh lads eh eh *wink nudge wink*). I think you already know what you need to do.
7) Critic
10 un-redeemable Yongfook Points if you know who this is.
Lots of blogs review things. The great thing about writing a review for a blog as opposed to a real publication is that you have no accountability. You won’t have some tie-wearing, corporate pussy editor breathing down your neck saying “Jon, you can’t make a reference to black dildos in a ‘Tickle Me Elmo’ review” etc. However if you DO want that, a blog provides a great training ground for nurturing some good old-fashioned outspoken tenacity and some individuals have made entire characters out of bringing the blog critic theme to levels of shoutyness that would put even King Leonidus to shame…IN HELL!!
8) Travel Writer
Ever blogged about your holiday? You realise that’s exactly what travel writers do, right? Except they get paid. However, you need to have an angle. Everyone and their mother has now seen or been to Angkor bloody Wat or the fricking Great Wall of China. You need to mix it up a little into something sellable. How about “Driving Through China - Brushes With a Thousand Deaths” or “Wildebeest in the Serengeti - How I Came To Master the Harpoon Gun”. I’d read that shit.
9) Blog Technology Consultant
This cartoon is both funny and can be true in some cases.
Blogging is still shrouded in mystery to big corporate clients. Corporations know that blogs are powerful, but they don’t really know how to harness their power. Kind of like the spinny boomerang thing in Krull, until the very end of the film where it kicks all sorts of arse. In summary, blogs are very much like awesome 80s sci fi weapons. You, the blogger, are Prince Colwyn and only you know how to use the power of the Glaive (blog) to unlock it’s full potential and save the world of Krull (the corporation). This analogy sounded better in my head.
10) Circus Clown
kill all humans.
If all else fails. Blogs are a performance. You’re dancing for the audience. Eventually you’ll get to the point where you’re like that homeless clown fellow who hangs out on the high street at weekends who never really recovered after being sacked from the circus 20 years ago, banging into pretend walls that are actually real walls, falling down pretend manholes that are actually real manholes, critically wounding yourself with every “performance” whilst concerned and disturbed onlookers inquire “mister..are you..ok?” to which you mumble incessantly “the show must go on…the show must go on”, the crudely-drawn smiley makeup applied by your gnarled, frostbitten hands failing to conceal the look of utter, utter despair on your face and emotional anguish in your eyes.
I choose Attention Whore!.
Toodles.
