Women and Making Money Off Of Blogging

I began blogging in 2008, the year I moved away from Myspace and the small little box of blogging poetry I had been doing amongst a great group of people, to Blogger, an expansive and noisy terrain filled with the movement of people excited about what they are doing, when they hardly know how to define it. I started blogging with the exact same intent that I had pushed my poetry into Myspace- toconnect through my writing in a ( often ) brutally honest way, and to make money through writing.

I've wanted to be a writer since I call remember wanting to do anything. My first piece was a play in elementary school called The Sun and Moon about the Moon's jealousy from being lit simply by the radiance of the sun.  Since then I have filled five or six diaries, the first one beginning around first grade, ( filled with mentions of what toys I played with and how my horse fund was going ) written a newsletter, wrote for my high school newspaper, read a poem at an AIDS vigil, written poems for my lover and my friends and my husband and my children and my mother and my sister and most of all for myself, had poems published online and then in print, wrote for college, wrote for Huffington Post,  and finally been paid for my work.  Mostly, in the years between five and now, 37, I wrote in the silence of an empty audience. I wrote papers and notebooks and notebooks and journals and typewriter and then later computer reams of essays, stories, poems and one and now two novels.  I have spent more time writing than I have showering, having sex, dancing or eating- more time writing words that no one ever saw and will ever see, more time, more time, more time.  I practiced, as the saying goes, until my fingers bled.  And I read. I read so many books that I cannot go to Goodreads, where my count runs lazily in the five or six hundreds, without adding one, two, no three more books I recall that I have read.  I have read more memoirs, novels, non-fiction, essay, poetry and journal collections, newspapers and magazines than seem possible. I am a speed reader, a prolific and devoted and passionate reader, and the only time I can force myself to slow down and read at a measured pace is when the words are that good, or that important to me. 

And now I am here, at Flux Capacitor, a place I have slowly worked on, like a small and devotedly loved piece of art, since the year 2008. I have pushed myself to be a better, braver and more honest writer every time I open this white steady box with the orange POST at the top.  I have poured my most intimate terrors, joys, lessons and losses into this place, using not only my memories, but also everything I know about writing. 

And I want to get paid doing it.

I have remained silent on the issues of bloggers getting paid over the last two years, even as I read more often blog posts about the subject, readers who did not write commenting, and then articles in bigger spaces and online newspapers and magazines discussing bloggers getting paid, bloggers running ads, bloggers using sponsored posts.  My silence was simply the non response that I often- maybe too often- enact when an 'issue' that feels patently un-'issue' like to me is bandied about. We aren't talking about illness, death, life, meaning, work, sex- the meat of things. I don't like to be part of a conversation that feels purposefully inflamed for the sake of excitement. I kept writing.

However. I do not believe that this issue is going away, and in fact, some people seem completely determined to keep it an issue. Being part of this community, being a writer and a blogger and oh- a woman- who has ads, who takes sponsored posts and who is delighted to earn money off of my blog, I cannot ignore the insult.

There is the obvious sexist overtone to the entire discussion. Most bloggers- all?- that are referred to in these discussions are women. And too often and too predictably the ones insulting and rebuking women for making money blogging are other women. I suppose women tear each other down for the same predictable, boring and timeless reasons people do these things to each other- pain, self-hatred, self-doubt, ego, a cruel streak, a bad day- but it is particularly insidious to watch. I read an interview recently where a 'powerhouse' of a woman was asked about her experience specifically as a successful woman, and she responded that the hardest part was not the men along the way, but the women at the top. What we want for ourselves and our daughters is best served in supporting the same for other women.  When women come together in support of one another amazing change, growth occurs. The blogs I have read decrying 'blogging money' are often written from a martyr standpoint. Well, they sigh, if those ladies want to make a living writing, I suppose that's their choice, but I'd like you all to know I never, ever expect a penny from any of this. Just your undying admiration for my excellence and over all superiority in character. My! I do love you all, and you love me, and love is all we need in this cold, false world. Ladies. Please. This is about as adult of a conversation as ' love means never having to say your sorry ' was in Love Story. We all need a pot to pee in, and I'd like mine to flush, ie: I need the money. If I didn't, great. If I do, great.  If we are all selling something in this world, I'm selling my writing, not my pure soul. I'm sure you all are aware of that by now.

 Men are traditionally expected and encouraged to make money doing whatever comes naturally to them, what they put their energies- both mental and physical - into making money is worthwhile. Women are traditionally shamed for wanting more, for working for more, and for God's sake let's move on, for demanding more. A professional request for better working conditions or more money from a woman can still be construed and openly discussed as bitchy. A man in the same situation is simply a powerhouse. While there are bumps along the way to making money through blogging- maintaining integrity, quality of writing, crassness of a sell- they are just that- bumps- and will either be dealt with well or not- but either way they do not reflect on the validity of the choice to attempt to make money through blogging.  I have always wanted to earn a living being a writer. I openly allow that I desire to make money off of Flux Capacitor, off of writing, and to make enough money writing to quit my day job. Open desire for women to make money is obviously somehow still watercolored with shame. It's 'embarrassing'- or at least, for some, believe it should be. I'm not the slightest damn embarrassed or coy about my intentions here and it flabbergasts me to come up with a single reason I should be. 

Now sometimes bloggers switch to money makers and their blogs suffer. Their writing suffers. I myself have stopped going to a few blogs I can think of because the writers there stopped almost completely writing about their lives and thoughts and began writing about things like concert promotions and baby goods and making slideshows to infinity, and I just got bored. Sometimes bloggers switch to money makers and their blogs become consistently embarrassingly pandering. These things happen, but that is not the point of this partichlah piece here. The route that blogging as a whole is going these days is a whole other piece! One that I definitely have my own thoughts and feelings about. But right now,  I'm talking about the voices out there that are actively shaming other bloggers for trying to make money through blogging. That's it.  If my writing becomes to stressful for me because of the money aspect, or suffers, I can totally see myself just shutting that aspect down here, and trying a new tact. But right now, I'm talking about....yes, you know what I'm going to say. YOU CAN"T HANDLE THE TRUTH! Ha. Sorry. Back to business-

I have worked my ass off to be a wonderful writer, and I have spent not only countless hours but also money making Flux Capacitor a good read for anyone who comes here.  I offer not only my writing but the blood of my life. ( Blood of my blood. Game of Thrones, anyone? Mr. Curry and I are obsessed! ) Someone believes I should do this for free because it makes it cheaper to want money for it. There is nothing cheap about putting a price on a craft. If a shaman woman offers me a protective symbol for a goat, I'll either say no or give her the goat. I'm not going to tell her she has no honor because she wants my billy for her magics. I have no intention of putting my hard earned craft out into the world without expecting anything in return. If I could do that, and wanted to, bully for me! But I don't; I can't. I work full time. Then I come home, be with and care for my family, until around nine pm, when I come here, and spend the next hour to four working on Flux and other essays and poems and stories I am working on.  I do this because I love to write and connect. I do this because I want to make money. And both ways of blogging are just fine. Both are valid. Both have worth, and dignity. Money does not strip dignity. The way a person lives-  the words out of our mouths and on our pages can strip dignity.  If I offer something beautiful or something amusing or something interesting or something true- something I made and ask a fair and honest price, who here would deny me that?

Well?

I haz magics. You haz billy?

(damnit. I can't help my fucking self!!!)

(..." and here is where the writer undermines her credibility, ")
 

Read Sweetney's thoughts on this same subject On Privilege and Selling Out 

Read Kate Granju's thoughts on the same subject Bloggers and Money and Selling Out and All That 
Read Ryan's thoughts on a slightly different side of this subject, which I totally can totally see myself possibly doing at some point if I get too stressed Life After Stats