Self-obsession for fun and profit
By Jennifer Wutz-Lopes
What happens when a person publishes his or her deepest thoughts on the internet and allows readers to comment on their reaction to those thoughts? It’s called blogging—essentially, personal memos to the world with the opportunity for instant feedback.
A weblog, or blog, is a personal journal on the internet. Blogging is a phenomenon that emerged in the late 1990s but has become spectacularly popular in the last year or so. For many, blogging is a hobby—something they do at home late at night when the kids are asleep or surreptitiously from their work PCs (not me!). For every ten thousand amateur bloggers who post crockpot recipes or reviews of American Idol, there is at least one who has made blogging his or her bread and butter. There are some brilliant, snarky, sarcastic bloggers out there making a ton of money based on nothing but their blogs … which makes me feel really quite jealous.
Mimi Smartypants is the pseudonym of a writer and editor who started blogging way back in 1999. She writes an online journal (smartypants.diaryland.com) packed with entries on whatever annoyed or amused her that day. It’s a true diary—in the little-faux-leather-bound-book-with-lock-and-key sense—for this thirty-three-year-old mom in Chicago. Mimi blogs about some of the more absurd items for sale in the Sky Mall catalog (who exactly is the target market for an animatronic chimpanzee bust?), crazy preacher ladies on the subway, and the lesbian inclinations of Maisy the Mouse. She also offers links to sublimely ridiculous web sites. Her more recent entries include the day-to-day activities of her adorably clever three-year-old daughter. Her book, The World According to Mimi Smartypants, released first in the United Kingdom in 2004 and in the United States last year, is now selling for $12.95 a pop on Amazon.com. Not bad for what the author has described on her site as “100% no new content! All crap you have read before, just on the printed page and in a different order!” Based on this statement alone, I think I love Mimi Smartypants. She only updates her blog every week or so, and I give a little shriek of happiness every time I click over and a see a new entry.
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Heather Armstrong, AKA “Dooce,” (dooce.com), is the top-ranked female blogger, according to Technorati.com. Heather lives in Utah and began blogging in 2001. She was rather famously fired from her job after writing some unflattering entries about her employer and co-workers on the Dooce blog, but today has one of the most profitable blogs around. Heather’s blog has been featured in the New York Times and on Good Morning America. This kind of exposure means that she can charge as much as she pleases for an ad posting on dooce.com. Heather has a very large and loyal audience, has won several blogging awards, and even recently scored a free trip to Amsterdam to attend a symposium on blogging in America. In a recent blog entry, Dooce writes, “never did I imagine that the website that once got me fired would one day bring in enough money that it would support my family.” She’s a stay-at-home mom making money with a laptop, an internet connection, and a sense of humor, and she is working at her dream job.
Most people really can’t expect to make a profit from their blog. I don’t earn anything from mine. I do it for fun, and to vent about the things in my everyday live. It would be nice to make some extra cash from my blogging skills, but I won’t be quitting my day job anytime soon.
Jennifer Wutz-Lopes lives in Lockport with her husband and son. You can read her blog at www.Jen14221.com.
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