A True Upstart Blogger

My name is Nathan Clendenin, and I’ve been a regular reader of this blog for about a year-and-a-half.  Like most of us who read this blog, you’re probably trying to figure out if making a living online could become a reality for you, whether you’ve started trying or not.  I can tell you right off the bat, I’m not going to try to convince you if it is or isn’t for you.  See, I am truly an “upstart blogger” in every sense of the term.  I’ve blogged casually ever since my wife (girlfriend at the time) and I spent a summer adventuring around Europe and Africa and shared it with our family and friends back in 2005.  And most recently my wife and I spent a year in South Africa working with a local church in the township of Mamelodi and shared stories from our experiences there.  So far blogging has been a fun way for me to share photos and stories.  For the most part these blogs haven’t seen very much traffic, and I haven’t made a single cent yet.

But in 2010 I want all that to change.  I have toyed around with making money online for a while now, and I’ve learned a ton, but still haven’t earned a dime. So this year is my chance to stop messing around and put in some serious effort.  I’m a photographer and multimedia storyteller by trade – and will be doing lots of that this year as well.  My hope is to develop a stream of passive income to help support working on the stories out there that otherwise would not be told.  But perhaps my greatest motivation to make blogging work for me this year is that in a few months I’ll be a dad for the first time, and well, money isn’t exactly growing on trees where I live and diapers (or nappies) aren’t cheap!

One of the things I value most about blogging is transparency and honesty (I really appreciate what Ashley’s done here on this blog, admitting weaknesses and failures and opening up to having other voices fill in where only one voice cannot).  What I hope to do here on this blog over the next year and beyond is to share my experiences as a true upstart blogger: the good, the bad, and the ugly and hopefully some figures on money!  I will share as many tips and tricks and ideas as I can along the way so you, too, can make 2010 a year of successful blogging if you so choose.

I’ve got a couple of blog ideas going around -  but the first one I will share is fitting, since it runs on a beautiful Upstart Blogger theme, Voluptua, and the idea for content came from this post.  The blog is called Photographers Who Blog, and you guessed it, it’s full of posts about great photographers with great blogs.  The idea is for it be a directory for others to visit and get inspired.  The beauty of this blog for me is that the content is easy to come by – there are thousands of great photographer blogs out there – and in putting the posts together I get inspired myself, as a photographer.  It’s really a win win!

One of the benefits of blogging in this way is that you can easily get the attention of those you’re blogging about, and hopefully get a reciprocal link from their blog and/or Twitter account.  In fact, just this past week, I was about to send a mention on Twitter to the photographer I’d written about when I noticed a comment from her had already come in.  I then had a chance to tell her about the site and enlist her to help promote it to her sphere of influence.

If you’re a regular Upstart reader you’ll be familiar with the link for AN Hosting, which I use and love (though Photographers Who Blog is actually hosted with 1and1, which I also love but unfortunately their affiliate payout is half of AN Hosting’s).  I am thinking of other ways to monetize this blog as well, possibly a page with camera gear and software (using an affiliate program like Amazon), and I’d love to hear ideas you might have once you’ve checked it out.

So if you’re interested in following my journey with making money online from $0 to who knows what, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed.  You can also follow @photogswhoblog on Twitter. And if you’re interested in participating in making this journey a success, feel free to share Photographers Who Blog on your blogs and Twitter accounts and by word of mouth to all your aspiring photographer friends.

NathanNathan Clendenin is a photographer and multimedia artist based in North Carolina, USA. His passion is telling stories of amazing things happening around the world or in his own back yard. Follow him on Twitter(@nathanclendenin), or check out his website (http://nclendenin.com/).