Wanna be a professional blogger? Ed Morrissey made it.

There are some Mommybloggers out there who have hit the big time, but I only follow a couple of them with any regularity at all. A few Mommybloggers make quite a bit of money through endorsements and advertisements. (Caution to Mommybloggers: get permission before writing about family members, especially children, in any depth). A larger number make a little money by placing ads on their blogs.

There are Mommyblogs (and some Daddyblogs) out there which appeal to specialized audiences - special needs kids, empty nesters, etc. In fact, there are specialized blogs out there for just about any interest. Ace (mild language warning) recently compared blogs and discussion forums to the intellectual salons of old - a way for people to continue their education into adulthood. But the more specialized the interest, the less likely a blog is to have a following large enough to generate a respectable amount of money. And most bloggers don't go into blogging as a career. But some have found careers by blogging.  Two who have are The Anchoress (an assertively Catholic blogger who sometimes comments on politics) and Ed Morrissey, who writes mostly about politics.

I started following blogs becauseI was concerned about the way the media covered politics. So most of the blogs I follow include at least some political content. The Anchoress, Elizabeth Scalia, writes about her "blogfather", Ed Morrissey on the occasion of an interview by Nick Gillespie of Reason TV.  Scalia got paying jobs writing (and later editing) due to her ability to gain a following as a blogger.

When he started blogging, Morrissey was running call centers for the alarm industry. He started blogging because he thought it was one thing he could do to help his country.  His first blog, Captain's Quarters (motto:  "Thus every blogger, in his kind, is bit by him who comes behind") got Scalia interested in blogging. It was one of my favorites as I started looking into the blogosphere, too. She writes:

. . . Ed managed to blog in a way that was smart, gentlemanly and fair and I thought I might be able to do that, too.


Heh. Clearly I have not managed to be as smart, gentlemanly or fair as he, but I am glad I took the plunge; blogging has changed my life, very much for the better — both personally and professionally — in that it has taught me how to slow down, take a breath and consider the Marquis of Queensbury Rules before jumping into a fray. I sometimes do revert to Bad Lizzie, but I am learning how to be more gentlemanly; it’s slow-going since, as long-time readers know, I was raised by blade-in-mouth barbarians.


Still I credit my blogfather for the lessons, and also for the encouragement. . .

Scalia now edits the columns of Ed's wife, Marcia, who lost her sight in her twenties due to diabetes, at the Patheos website.

Hard-core libertarian Nick Gillespie's interview with Morrissey is very interesting. It reveals that Morrissey started blogging when his wife was in the hospital. Similarly, Glenn Reynolds, an even bigger name in the blogosphere, started blogging when his wife was very ill. Most of the first crop of bloggers started out spending money on their blogs rather than making money. Blogging in its early days was full of interesting people who wrote just because they wanted to. The vast majority of bloggers still do.

If you're hoping to make money blogging (directly or indirectly) someday, you probably need to count on writing for the love of it for some time first. And keep your day job.