Wednesday, March 02, 2005

My life as Carrie Bradshaw

Last night as I was watching a re-run of Sex and the City, I was envious about how Carrie Bradshaw always has so much free time on her hands. She's always shopping, meeting a friend for lunch, meeting the girls for cocktails, or something else that I never have time to do.

'Doesn't she ever work?' I thought to myself, immediately followed by 'Duh - of course she works; she's a writer'. Every episode shows her tapping away on her laptop, seemingly transcribing her random thoughts about life, men, sex, relationships, and Minolo Blonic shoes. These random thoughts somehow get messaged into a weekly column in a New York newspaper. She makes a living from this, and can afford $400. a pair Minolo Blonic shoes. Lots of 'em.

Then I started to think 'I've got random thoughts about life, men, sex, and relationships. Why can't I get paid for writing a once-a-week column so that I too can have loads of free time on my hands? No sooner had I completed that thought, that I answered my own question: because I write a blog for free.

I jokingly mentioned this conundrum to a friend in an IM today at work, and he told me that some people get paid for blogging. Although the idea wasn't totally surprising to me, it did make me wonder if any blogs get that much visibility that advertisers would actually pay people to write blogs and mention their products in them. He told me about one blog that regularly gets like 400,000 hits a day! That reminded me that a friend/colleague at work who knew of my blog had clipped an article from the newspaper entitled "How to make money from your blog".

So, I scrounged around in the desk drawer I thought I may have tossed the clipping into, and sure enough I found the article. But I didn't have time to read it. Because unlike Carrie Bradshaw, I have a full-time, 5-days a week kind of job and do not have loads of free time to be shopping, meeting friends for lunch, meeting the girls for cocktails, or reading newspaper articles. I only have time to write in my blog... for free.

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