This week the New York Times Reported on how people from all walks of life are making a living off of their blogs. I was amazed, and continue to be amazed, at the many types of sites that end up becoming monetized where people can make a comfortable, if not exceptional, living, talking and writing about something they love.

One of the blogs mentioned in the article was of a man who got laid off from his interactive media job and started posting pictures of – get this – pictures of clouds and he’s pulling in an income from that! (and here I am, the guy who loves taking pictures of trees, and they’re just languishing in an iPhoto album, taking up disk space like a bunch of deadbeat teenagers who won’t get a job!

Get to work you… you… trees!

The advice the bloggers gave was solid:

• Choose a topic you will never get tired of – in the beginning you may (will) struggle, but you need to keep on going.
• Don’t choose a topic just because you think it will make you money – you have to truly love it and be passionate about it.
• If your goal is indeed to make money, make sure the content you will be writing is authentic (I’ll add, original) and useful

One of the first web sites I ever setup was a website about Billiards – shooting pool. I love to shoot pool. I thought I could love writing about it enough that I can drive enough visitors to it whereby I would make money via affiliate marketing.  I was wrong. I still love to shoot pool on a regular basis. I just don’t want to write about it every day.

So, fellow bloggers, future webmasters, … what are you passionate about? What is it you want to write, shoot, teach or share? What’ll get you up early and keep you up late?

One of my passions is to teach, obviously, otherwise this site would not exist. I certainly would not be up at 12:01 on a Friday night after writing a teleprompter script for an hour if there were something else I’d rather be doing this evening (um, morning).

I LOVE doing what I do… and I look forward to helping anyone I can (you?) take your idea, build your idea around your WordPress website, help you create your online identity, and with the WordPress training made available here, help you tell your own story that can inspire others here in the WordPress Dojo community.

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