Let's say you're one of these people who just love curating bits and pieces of the web. You might be an incessant Flickrer. Or you may constantly upload your lunches to http://tastespotting.com/. Maybe you just do what everyone else does and blog your thoughts and feelings to Tumblr.com or Blogspot. Basically, you're a new-tech scrapbooker. But if you do it enough, can you convert your passion into a profession?
Short answer: "yes."
Can it be lucrative, "yes."
Can I still build a business by blogging? "NO!"
If this sounds confusing, you're brilliant. It is confusing.
In the early days, before the founders of Twitter and Brizzly, @shellen @biz and @ev built and sold Blogger.com / Blogspot.com to Google for hundreds of millions of dollars and before Google even acquired the software that would immediately make them Billions and Billions called Adwords / Adsense, anything you were good at could have made you a millionaire.
Many of the guys who had BBSs back then became billionaires. There was this one dude who sold PEZ Heads on his BBS. Then he started selling other collectibles. Once blogging and adsense took hold and you could get clicks from Google Adwords for 5 pennies, He built an ugly site and called it EBAY.
There are always fresh new green tomatoes.
Curating data, whether it's for entertainment (BoingBoing.com) information (Wikipedia.com) or sale (Ebay.com), before the light-bulb was invented, made you the very first 24 hour convenience store.
Now, it (more than probably) won't work.
As the internet matures, Facebook Ads charges $1 per click, nobody pays attention to Google Adwords ads, and Posterous.com makes it easy for your great grandmother to launch a competing blog, You will not make a living blogging.
But can you turn your passion into a profession using a blog? 100% Yes!
This is how you do it.
I remember as a kid being heartbroken by tomatoes. No, it's not a code word. You see, my grandmother would grow the most beautiful, red, shiny, and plump tomatoes in our back yard right next to the wooden fence. I'd first see them as little bulbs. Then they'd turn into green orbs. Finally, after weeks of mouthwatering anticipation, the first hits of a red blush would show.
I couldn't wait to have my own hot red vine ripened tomatoes.
As the red rapidly overtook the green, I would count down the mornings before running off the catch the school bus thinking, the next morning is it. Tomorrow, I'll be able to take a perfect tomato to school.
The next morning, all the tomatoes had worms in them. I was heart broken.
At that moment, I realized that if you want to dominate an entire vertical all for yourself, you've got to poke your hole before the tomato is ready.
This may sound discouraging because you already know that there are a million and one blogs precisely dealing with what you love. They already have adsense bolted to them. They already have followers in Twitter. And you, you got nothing.
But, you've got to realize that you're discouraged because you're looking at an already red ripe tomato that full of worms.
There are always fresh new green tomatoes.
Can I still build a business by blogging? "NO! You've Got to Do Much More"
Stop staring at the poked tomatoes and find a fresh green one. Here's the trouble. We're all trained to conditioned to notice only the ripe tomatoes. So here's a list of things that will help you find green ones.
1) Look in the dark
Find a niche green tomato before the media turns it's attention on it; we can call this the dark before sunrise. Remember, the media only covers things that are of interest to the masses. So find a topic that is not yet of interest to the masses.
2) There are still green tomatoes at high noon
You just have to go where the worms haven't gone yet.
3) The worms have not gotten to partner networks
Worms are dumb. I have no idea why people with a shoe blog don't trade big bold ads and even guest posts with people who have a sock blog. I don't know why car blogs aren't teaming up with roadtrip travel blogs. I don't know why single mommy blogs don't team up with single daddy blogs.
Blog about what ever you want. Now, start partnering. Nobody's doing it.
Personally, I'm taking my own advice. I just launched http://plurban.com ... I'll be send a lot of traffic to it so if you want to be noticed, just post of your blog to Plurbis.com and we shall go hunt green tomatoes together.
Friend me at http://www.facebook.com/bob.wan.kim for direct collaboration
How to Get Into the News Media and Pull Big Bloggers Like Guy Kawasaki With 
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