How to survive with blogging is still a big topic. How couldn’t. To earn a living with a work you like is in the top 5 of aims in life, I guess. This hadn’t changed for generations. The only difference is, that in former times it wasn’t called blogging, it was called writing and publishing. Maybe the better term.
Without telling something new: The technological progress has changed the way of publishing (and of course still does). It vanished the barrier of publishing. But because it became so easy to publish it became also difficult to earn a living with publishing. Where the offer is huge it is difficult for providers to earn much money.
While times are changing a lot of new business models are tried out, for companies, for people. This post ist about my personal business model.
This model is quite simple: I don’t earn any money with this Blog as a direct path, nevertheless it is – in two ways – the core of my business model.
- Blogging makes you a bit smarter
While writing I get clear ideas of the topics I write. To be more accurate: It is not the writing itself, it is the thinking and rethinking before the writing. It is the process between being curious and having the answer. And there is such a big difference to me between searching and finding answers (mostly on the internet) and writing these answers as a blogpost. To me I have to write down to become clear and I have to become clear to remember. Running a blog is to be honest to myself. Because as a blogger you shouldn’t be lying to yourself, otherwise your lies (mostly in the way of weak arguments) will be revealed by the readers. What is more: While I am writing sometimes the reader is already there, in the way that I proof my arguments from the perspective of the readers. They are the judge, they make me think as precise as I am able to. Otherwise I am outed as a fool. And I don’t want to be a fool. So: Blogging let me understand the world and understanding the world makes me a bit more valuable to whomever I work. - Blogging let others see your abilities and attitudes
I am blogging for advertising myself and lowering matching costs. What is Johannes Eber alias Pixelökonom standing for? Does his thinking (and writing) fit to our business? Finding me with my blog on the internet is finding me but also understanding me. So if someone is trying to hire me he is able to become an idea of who I am and what I think. This is very important in a branch where opinion is important. For example: I work for a company called Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft (abbreviated INSM). It is a lobby financed by the employer associations of the metal and electrical industry. The INSM supports reforms towards a better social market economy, while “better” means to them in an economic liberalism way. They wouldn’t have chosen me and (I wouldn’t have chosen them) if my writing hadn’t fit to their principles (and their principles fits to mine).
Conclusion: My blogging is related to my income without generating any income in a direct way. But what is also very important to me: I do blogging for myself, to become clear of a lot of things like why people/me act like they/I do, about how societies are or should be organised, about what makes a human being human. So I don’t blog solely because of the business model, the motivation of writing sustainable is gaining insights and being read. And I don’t know if the former goes without the latter. Sometimes I think about writing just for myself, without publishing, I ask myself if I am writing just for gaining insights or if I am (also) writing for gaining compliments. The fact that I haven’t tried out yet leads to that being read is an (the?) essential motivation for my writing.
For a living:
Since 2011 I do all digital stuff for a company called Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft, abbreviated INSM. It is a lobby financed by the employer associations of the metal and electrical industry. In short: The INSM supports reforms towards a better social market economy (more).
Furthermore since 2009 I have been a partner of a small company (3 owners, 2 employees), an agency in the media sector called Solokarpfen Publishing. We do corporate publishing; things like developing websites, but also print stuff like booklets, brochures and flyers. And we fill the structures we develope with content. We also do Newsletters: Templates, content, sending. We do Social Media and Online Marketing like Google Adwords. And we do classical press relations.
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Pixelökonom 