Paid to blog

It's something many bloggers must dream of - quitting work to blog full time. Veteran blogger Jason Kottke has decided to stop being a web designer take on his blog Kottke.org as a full-time enterprise. He intends to fund the venture by asking readers to donate $30 to "help enable [him] to edit/write/design/code the site for one year on a full-time basis". In the process he has possibly coined a new term - micropatron.

I can't decide what to make of this, which is reflected in the fact that on reading the widely divergent reactions on this Metafilter post and the at turns bitchy and encouraging comments, I agreed with what pretty much everyone said.

Camworld's right that people are cheap and Kottke's success may depend on providing his micropatrons with "something more tangible" - and as gwint and others point out, $30 isn't so much a micropayment as a midipayment. In my least charitable moments I have sympathy for Crunchland's view that such a request is little better than begging on a street corner.

For me, a more serious concern is that, like the rapper who runs out of things to write songs about when he becomes a celebrity, Kottke.org's "voice" will become lose something from becoming a for-profit enterprise. As odinsdream puts it over at MetaFilter, "It seems like these 'I want to live off my blog' business plans just end up cheapening their site by putting it at the centre of their lives."

And yet ... as someone who does get paid for writing and blogging, I have to applaud Kottke's brave move. As Meg Hourihan (who knows a thing or two about setting up new ventures) says, "This is the chance to support something new: an 'amateur' deciding to edit a blog full-time without corporate support and without advertising. It's a long time blogger chosing to go pro, and Jason is the perfect person to do it."

Anyway, as stupidsexyFlanders retorts to another MetaFilter poster who accuses Kottke of vanity in relation to his turning into a pro blogger, "I never understood all the kottke hating. Is it just 'a-list' envy? Something else? Because accusing a blogger of narcissism is like accusing your minister of piety, isn't it?"

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