Some bad

First and perhaps most important, you lose some ability of control because it does not always matter how good you are, but how good the overall team is. Meaning that you can be writing great and drawing in the readers, but if the rest of the writers are poor then the site will suffer overall. And once the site begins to suffer, everyone both good and bad can see the effects.

Another downfall is that you have no (or little) control over how the blog operates and could be left hanging if the blog owner flakes out or even if they decide to sell out. This means that you could fire up your web browser to find the site has gone down to never return, or open your email to a bit of bad news and find that you have gotten a pay cut or worse, a new owner has come in and your services are no longer needed.

Some good

Some benefits that you can expect is that you have more control over your time. You are not left worrying about the site design or making new ad deals. In fact you do not really have to worry about the financials other than how much you need to write in order to make x amount of dollars or to meet any quota you may have.

What does that mean? Well for me it means freedom, which was the main reason that I decided to leave my 9-5 cubicle job a few years back. For me being a network blogger is the ideal situation, it gives me more time to spend with my family and plenty of flexibility when it comes to training for running and triathlon events. It allows me to sit down and write when I want and when I make the time, not when someone else tells me I have to “clock in.”

The good and bad can come down to money

Of course, I would say that it is also important to decide just what you are in this for. Like I mentioned earlier I wanted the freedom, but on the flip side some want the money. I can respect that, I once chased the dollar. I strongly believe that most site owners have the potential to make more money than network bloggers, but that also takes quite a bit more of a time investment.

Some advise from a network blogger

If someone is interested in becoming a network blogger, I would suggest having a blog of your own first and work on creating a portfolio of writing. This will hopefully help you in getting that first job. Then once you have that first job, be the best you can…and then try a little harder.

Its also important to be able to adapt because different owners and different editors will each have their own standards and quirks. Also don’t forget that you can always learn something new, and you should always strive to improve your work.

I suggest always keeping an eye out for new opportunities and network with other bloggers whenever you can because you never know what may happen. I also suggest to diversify yourself, meaning write for several different sites if you can. This will spread your money out and not put all your eggs in one basket, you know, just in case an owner flakes out. However if you choose to go the multiple site route make sure you are not causing any conflicts of interest because as a network blogger your writing and your name is the basis for your reputation.

I am not sure if its the excitement that I am still feeling from BlogOrlando, but I am thinking I may want to speak at the upcoming Tampa Bay BarCamp.

Of course that is easier said than done. You see, there are two things that are holding me back on giving a 100% go ahead on speaking.

• 1. I am not sure what I would or could speak about that would benefit others…anyone have any ideas?
• 2. Perhaps this point is holding me back a little more, but I will let you in on a not so well kept secret. I have a huge fear of public speaking and suffer from social anxiety. It bothers me just to speak with people I do not know, much less getting up in front of a group.

But the bottom line is that I am passionate about blogging and furthering myself in this industry. I know that speaking could always help me out in that respect, or more important (assuming I could get over the fear and come up with a good topic) my talk may be good enough that someone else could get something to take away from it and possibly help them move forward.

I am a professional blogger and blog for other networks, so maybe I could speak on something along that line. Maybe my experience in general and how I got into the blogging world. From finding my first job and moving on from there.

The thing is that I have never attended a BarCamp and I am not sure what kind of crowd to expect and what level they will be at. Meaning I am not sure if my knowledge will be able to help anyone at this type of event. I do have stuff to share, good points and things that I have made mistakes with.

With BarCamp coming up fast, I have plenty of thinking left to do…

As many that follow along here already know, I work from home as a blogger and you would think that as a home office based worker that most of my data would be locally stored. But thanks to some new (and old) programs I have found myself storing quite a bit of data in the cloud. Now don’t get me wrong, I still have most of this data also stored locally, but the cloud storage allows me to access this on multiple devices.

At this point I am using:

• MobileMe for my contacts and calendar: This allows me to have the same data synced across my main iMac, my iPhone and in the cloud from any computer that I can get online with.
• Sugar Sync for my documents: I have my documents that are stored on my main iMac synced with my Sugar Sync account, which allows me to access those documents on my MacBook, HP Mini-Note and even my iPhone. I have access just about everywhere I go.
• Evernote for notes: Again another cross platform app, with Evernote I can write, sync, access and edit notes on multiple computers. I can use this on my iPhone as well as my Windows based Mini-Note and my OS X based computers. I can also log in using any web connected computer.
• Firefox with Foxmarks for my bookmarks: Despite many people moving away from using bookmarks, I still use them regularly. As a pro-blogger who writes for multiple sites, using bookmarks allows me to flag items and sources to come back and write later on. With Foxmarks I can now have access to my same bookmarks from any one of my computers. I can also login to the MyFoxmarks webpage from any web connected computer and check anything that I need.
• Delicious and Magnolia for online bookmarks: I use both of this a little less than other apps, for me these are my “save for later” type of program. If I am working and come across a nice looking post, I can save it in either service and than easily find it later from any web connected computer or device and be able to read it at my leisure.
• And of course…Gmail for email.

While I am comfortable with this setup, I do think its pretty strange for someone who works from home to rely on the Cloud so much, but its nice for me because even though work from home and I have a primary computer (iMac), I ofter use my MacBook, my Mini-Note and also my iPhone.

This should be a good day, a day that I can get out of the house and out of my home office and just enjoy learning and meeting some new people. Of course the learning part is fun for me, the meeting new people is going to be a little harder. I guess part of the reason why I enjoy blogging so much is that it can be very virtual and I can avoid the awkward social face-to-face meetings.

But with that, I do realize that I also need to network in real life to make progress in the pro-blogging world.

I was registered and intended to go to IzeaFest a few weeks back, but my wife ended up having surgery a few days before and it just was not a good time to leave, after all family comes first. Then after BlogOrlando I will also be attending the first Tampa Bay BarCamp, which is on October 11 and 12th.

That should be interesting in itself, I am planning to attend the party the night of the 11th, which begins at 5:30 and then the full New Media day on the 12th. I say that it should be interesting because I am running a 50k trail run on the morning of the 11th and will most likely be pretty sore and tired. But overall it should be another great event for me to learn and do some more networking and hopefully work to get passed some of my social anxiety.

begin post
Sarah Perez posted a message, well actually a question on Twitter and it really got me thinking…

“I still care about what mainstream web users think and feel…do you? Or do you think we should just leave them all behind?”

After giving this some thought, lately I feel like I am leaving people behind, and when I try to figure out why I cannot come up with an answer.

To give some background, I am a full time tech blogger, which means that the latest story is the hottest story and it gets old quickly, actually very quickly and we need to stay on top of what is going on. I have gotten so used to that with my online life it has started to spill out in the real world for me.

Giving it some thought, I am not sure what it really means, logically thinking is it really that exciting to know that a new (enter product name here) is coming out in (enter future time here)? Or can I be just as happy to know the details when its actually available?

I think I can describe this with a statement, although to be honest I am not sure it makes sense, but here goes…

I feel like I am living a virtual life in a real life world.

I spend most of my day and sometimes nights online, basically I live by what the latest tech news story is, and that means I pretty much live in a mixture of Firefox, Google Reader, Wordpress and Expression Engine.

The sad part is that as someone who is always looking for the latest and greatest news I often find myself taking tech for granted. Its been a long time since I was just able to enjoy something because I have already moved my focus and desire to something new, something that is “better.”

I need to be able to better define what is “better” and what is “needed.”

Sure that new (enter product name here) may be better than the previous model, but do I (or you) really need it.

I am now asking myself the question, how will it benefit me? And, are the new features really worth the extra money?

As much as I love tech, I often have to answer that with a NO. By all accounts I have an impressive home office setup, but I really could do this (tech blogging) on a crappy old desktop or laptop, but somehow I have over the years convinced myself that I needed that faster computer or bigger display, and yes somethings like large or dual displays do help productivity, but is it really needed?

Just to use cell phones as one example;

In my real life world, most of my friends have regular phones, you know, the kind that just make and receive calls and the occasional text or picture message. Me on the other hand, I have had a smartphone since the Treo 600 era and quickly jumped from one handset (and carrier) to another over the years in an effort to stay on top.

I have had a Treo 600, Treo 650, XV 6700, Treo 700w, Treo 650 (again), Sidekick 3, BlackBerry Pearl, original iPhone and now the iPhone 3G. I am also trying hard to convince myself that I do not need to pick up the G1 as a second phone. Now don’t get me wrong the iPhone 3G is a heck of a lot nicer than the Treo 600, but honestly at this point I am not even really sure that I need a smartphone or even a phone for that matter. I rarely make calls that I could not make from a home line, and I work from a home office, why do I need a smartphone when I am in front of my iMac most of the day?

Its just that on some level I feel that I need to have the latest and greatest, maybe its the online world I live in, but I need to find a way to get back to a normal life, both online and off.

I need to re-learn to appreciate technology for what it is and what I have, not what the next model will do. I once had a computer, the name does not matter but it was slow and crappy and had a 56k modem, but it got me online and that was cool and fun. Now I have an HP Mini-Note, MacBook, Compaq desktop PC and my main 24″ iMac with a secondary 20″ Apple Cinema display all tied into a 20Mbps always on connection, and you would think that would be nice, but I miss the excitement of the old days.

Somehow it seems right to have these, after all I am a tech blogger and need to be able to connect whenever and wherever, but I realize I still do the same thing as I did with my first crappy computer, I may use different programs now, Firefox instead of IE or Opera, and Mail instead of Outlook Express, but its essentially the same thing, I go online and read about stuff that interests me.

I wish I could experience that joy in tech again.

The roles that changed have given me some more freedom to come and go, which is why I began blogging in the first place. I can now write as I want and need, but do not have to be available 24/7 any longer. That is good news to me!

As for my few days away, they have done wonders for me and once again I have a refreshed feeling and I am ready to begin writing again. Its strange because when I was getting real burnt out I found myself resorting back to my old life and actually handed out a few business cards as a mortgage broker. While I still maintain my studies with that and keep my license active with the state and a company, its not a path I want to pursue full time at this point. Also, if you have seen me in real life or in pictures you can most likely tell that I am not really a corporate type of guy.

During my few days away, I have kept tabs on a select few of my favorite sites, just to stay somewhat in the loop and it looks like that may have been a good move because another opportunity seems to have come up for me. This latest will hopefully allow me to reach another audience and hopefully grow further as a writer and blogger.

As of now I am hoping for the best and still looking to further myself in the blogging world. Although I have a hard time telling people what I do for a living, as most do not seem to understand, I am proud to be earning a full time living as a blogger. Of course there is always room to grow and better myself.

In the meantime blogging will retain my full attention and as far as being a mortgage broker, that will remain on the back burner and I will pick up a deal here and there just to make some extra money.

I have at least figured out part of my problem, and it is actually pretty dumb. I tend to avoid posting here because by the time I write everywhere else (for sites that pay the bills) I generally just do not feel like writing anymore.

Granted I have things to say, but most of the time they just go unsaid. Talk about being a bad blogger. Even though I realize by me posting here I can only further myself in the blogging world, it is still hard to find make the time to actually put my thoughts down.

I need to get passed that. I has settled on a theme for this blog, and it would be to basically just talk about my experience in blogging, things I have found interesting in the online world and want to share, but generally speaking I consider it my “journey through the internet.” Now I just need to get it through my head that just because I am not getting paid to write here that I am doing it for free.

I guess this is a drawback to being a network blogger and not working entirely for yourself as an owner/blogger.

Personally I could care less if you or someone else smokes, but I am under the belief that recreational use by a responsible adult is no more harmful than someone (an adult) having a few drinks and smoking a bunch of cigarettes.

Of course I am sure that many would disagree with that opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own, this is just mine. All I ask is that you keep one thing in mind while reading this post, I am only referring to one bust, so please try and think of this times 5 or even 10, there is a bigger picture here.

However after reading about this recent marijuana bust and hearing how many officers were involved and how much the marijuana was worth I began to think a little more, and it almost seems like a no-brainer that it should be legalized. I would also add that should it be legalized, it would need to be sold in a manner similar to cigarettes or alcohol.

I read about the bust, which was local to me on the WCTV.tv website and I cannot understand the money involved here, and just how the government, both local and federal can think that this is money well spent. Let me explain…

According to the story details, the police “raided 62 Tampa-area homes” which I can only imagine cost the department quite a bit in pay, both regular and overtime. I am not knowledgeable in this area, but I would imagine that at a minimum there were 10 officers at each house. That would mean that this 62 house raid used 620 officers, even rounding down quite a bit we are looking at say 500, that sounds like a lot of pay to me. I am sure you can think of some other areas that these officers could have been and how that pay could have been spent.

Next, according to the story details, they were able to arrest “about 70 people” and “more are expected.” This means that 70+ people will have to get processed into the jail system and they will all have to have their day in court. I would also venture to guess that at least a handful of them will have court appointed lawyers. This sounds like a lot of money being spent by the local government to handle these cases. Again I am sure we can think of many other places that money could have gone.

Next up, according to the story details, the marijuana had an “estimated street value of $13 million.” Think of that, $13 million dollars, that is not a small amount by any means. If this was legally grown and legally sold in this area that money could do a lot for the community. Not to mention if it was sold legally it could also be taxed, turning that $13 million into even more money.

Finally the story also mentioned that the people who were growing the marijuana were “illegally tapping into power lines” and that resulted in “more than a million dollars worth of electricity” being stolen. Lets see, who will have to pay for that, the electric company and the honest customers because eventually the rates will go up.

Basically, if marijuana was legal;

• They could have saved all the pay for the officers raiding those homes.
• They could have saved all the pay for the people that had to process those arrested into the jail system.
• They could have saved the pay for the judges, court appointed attorneys and court officials that have to deal with these cases.
• They could have legally sold and taxed that $13 million dollars worth of drugs.
• They could have also given that million dollar plus worth of stolen electricity to the rightful owner, because if marijuana was legal it would be a business and that electricity would not have been stolen, it just would have been a business expense.

So smoke or not, personally I do not care, but its hard to argue that this is a shitload of money being spent to take it away, and its a shame because with some proper legislation that money could go somewhere else that it needed even more.

[WCTV.tv]