When Friends and Family Don’t Understand Problogging

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I’ve been actively blogging for over 5 years now, and by “active” I mean that at one point I generated well over 20 blog entries per day. Original content, too. I was younger, then, and as anyone who’s crossed that magical 40th birthday line understands, I had a heck of a lot more energy in those days, too.

One thing I didn’t have back then: an income to show for my blogging. Naturally, this led to quite a few sighs from my husband when he heard things like “Oh, sorry I didn’t get dinner started yet. There was a breaking news story I wanted to blog about.” Likewise, my mother-in-law would cluck and grumble to herself that I was frittering away my time unproductively but, since she clucks disapprovingly over just about anything I do, I didn’t pay her much attention.

My friends’ incredulity would get to me, though. They simply couldn’t understand why I wanted to spend my time building up backlinks, establishing a solid and loyal readership, and constantly pursuing the day when I’d be able to pay some (if not all) of my bills with my blog(s). “Come lay out by the pool,” they’d urge me in summer. “Come skiing with us,” they’d beckon in colder months. But, although I did take them up on their offers now and again, I maintained a belief that I needed to put in a certain number of hours per day online.

Five years later, that’s paying off. My husband saw it when I announced — a year early — that we’d paid off his car. My mother-in-law sees it (though she pretends not to) now that we can afford to visit her almost half as often as she expects. My friends? Well, so many of them have lost their jobs to outsourcing, layoffs and business closings in the past year. Now they’re coming to realize how much more “secure” my hobby-turned-job is than theirs ever was, and that maybe I wasn’t so foolish for passing by those (expensive) days at the pool or on the slopes.

Which is not to say that any of them actually get the fact that if your name isn’t John Chow or Darren Rouse you aren’t going to be earning Big Bucks while on vacay. (Though, to be fair, both gentlemen put in their dues and sweat-equity, too. I’m just jealous.) If you’re a little guy, or a gal like me or a big (in internet-weight only) gal like Barbara Ling, you’ve still got to put in time at the keyboard. And despite seeing that such time translates into money, friends and family still don’t always get that fact.

This week, for instance, I’ve sold two articles to Pajamas Media, a half-dozen high-paying paid reviews written elsewhere, designed sites for three bloggers, monetized two others as part of my blog-consulting business and made my standard earnings from the paid blogging companies I work with, along with regular AdSense earnings, too. The result: I out-earned my husband. Twice over.

Does that mean he’s been any more understanding when, say, I’ve suggested I’d rather pick up Subway than spend an hour cooking dinner? Or that my son, who has a new basketball and hoop to occupy him while Mommy works on her laptop on the deck, gets it that I can’t stop what I’m doing to hear yet another knock-knock joke? Do friends (who want me to set them up a blog, then design their blog, then teach them how to blog and to monetize their blog… for free) understand when I decline an invitation to the movies or karaoke at the local bar?

No, no they do not.

Fortunately, I’ve worked up a short list of sure-fire ways to circumvent these problems now (well, with everyone but my son — and since I’ve managed to get the others off my back I actually have more time for him as a result).

• Hard evidence: I print the day’s earnings to show my husband the instant he walks in the door. If dinner’s not ready but the bank account’s fatter than when he left that morning he suddenly doesn’t mind that trip to Subway quite so much.

• Calendar it: When I have a deadline for an article at PajamasMedia.com or for a paid entry I put it on the calendar. Not just mine, but the family’s calendar, too. In red letters. Big ones. Seeing those obvious tasks reminds my family that I’m not just sitting around the house eating bon-bons all day (because these days my butt sure couldn’t convince them of that).

• Be inaccessible: Whether its phone calls or email from friends I hardly ever answer it during “working hours” (by which I mean the standard 9 to 5). I’m increasingly adamant about treating my blogging time like a business, so I set up email rules to send most of my friends’ messages to a specific folder that I don’t check at all during my ‘business hours’. I don’t take their calls, either. Sure, I felt bad about that at first then realized that if I called them at their jobs they wouldn’t hesitate to say “I can’t talk now.” I just cut that one particular step out.

• Put your foot down. I have one friend who has actually been blogging for a while herself, too. She’s made noises about wanting to earn an income from blogging, but I’ve yet to see her actually make any legitimate effort to do so. (Though she does complain a lot about how little she actually earns.) She used to call me during the day to talk about how problematic her morning had been, and when she realized I was only half-listening she’d get quite offended. It didn’t matter how many times I told her that I was working, that I had to make the most of the very few hours I actually have available to be online. I finally had to tell her that, in order to avoid it becoming an issue between us, she needed to call me after 5 p.m. Period. No exceptions unless there were police or ambulances involved.

The thing is, when it comes to friends and family seeing us at the computer, they’re used to equating those keyboard hours with wasting time. Try as they might, they just can’t understand that there’s more to blogging than web surfing; that writing can’t be done well with someone else yammering in your ear; or that most entries take four times longer to write than to read. Since we’re just “futzing around”, they reason, a little interruption won’t be a big deal.

But we know better.

That friend of mine who I told not to call me until 5 o’clock because it might interfere with my blogging hours? Yes, she initially took it as hard as you probably imagined. But you know what’s happened since? Her blogging income has doubled now that she’s channeling her own energies in the same path I’d been trying to channel mine. I called her the other morning to congratulate her on that fact. She picked up the phone and said, “Hey, it’s not after five o’clock yet. We can’t talk. I’m making money.”

And you know what? I was thrilled for us both.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Make Money Blogging. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Tagged in: blog entries | blogging for the money | Darren Rouse | john chow | problogger | problogging

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