Blogging for $$$

I started blogging here on Blogger back before Google acquired it. Of the different formats that I've encountered, I'm pretty comfortable here. To be honest, my first foray into blogging was on LiveJournal. I still have an account there but I haven't updated it in over a year. It is my hope to start slapping up book reviews on there (as that is the theme of that particular blog) after the chaos of NaNoWriMo and the holidays are passed. I've been working my way through the Harry Potter series and the Dark Tower series. I have some definite thoughts on both. (95% of those thoughts are positive, by the way).

When I heard that I could blog on Helium and on Triond for some sort of cash payment, I decided to start posting material up on there. Then my life got crazy and I wound up taking an extended break (not by choice) from those platforms and blogging in general. Helium was an interesting place and I'm still not sure if I liked it. I kinda found the platform unwieldy and awkward. I, however, am one of those people who are technically termed a 'user' by the computer industry. If it is not damn near idiot proof, I'm a person who has a good chance of having some difficulty with it. Not because I'm an idiot but because my interests and expertise lie in other areas.

Triond was a good site. I didn't make much money on there (nor on Helium) but I found the platform really user friendly. I posted a bunch of stuff and got the beginnings of a readership base. Then my forced break from blogging happened. Over the past few years, I've been trying to get back into writing on Triond. I started to see my readership go back up and I was becoming hopeful of actually getting a check from them. (On both Triond and Helium, you need a minimum of $50 to get a check.)

I suppose it started having problems back around early June. At first, I didn't think much of it. After all, if you're running a site as big as that, you're bound to have some difficulties cropping up from time to time. The glitchy software or servers (I honestly have no idea where the problem is) became big headaches for me over the course of July and early August. Then, sometime in the middle of August, Triond became terribly difficult to use. Not because they changed their platform but because of how badly the servers were lagging behind and that they were constantly timing out when I went to post anything.

By September, I found that I could barely get to the main page with out things crashing on me. At first, I thought perhaps the problem was my computer. So I turned to the computer whiz, my Beloved husband, and asked him what the error messages meant and if I had done something wrong. He explained to me that they were generic error messages indicating that something was wrong on Triond's end. I kept trying at regular intervals to use Triond to post things.

I had articles waiting for approval for over the course of the month. What was usually a two day turnaround time from post to publish turned into a full month in the case of two articles. It has me thinking that I need to wrestle with Triond to get my original content off there (because I foolishly did not have backups) and discontinue using it.

I don't know what I'm going to do next. I know that I will keep my blogs here on Blogger. The mirror blog of Veiled Witch over on Wordpress is going to stay. Heck, I'm even going to keep the LiveJournal account open. While I can't seem to get the blogs here on Blogger to work with Google's advertising widget, I'm not going to worry about that. It was never the point of these blogs.

Beloved and the PorchCat have both pointed out that I am good enough to get paid for my work. I keep trying to screw up the courage to follow the links that the PorchCat gave me but my social phobia gets in the way terribly. It makes me feel despondent to see that I can not even bring myself to just go out and freelance on the internet, where there will be no face to face contact. It is something that I will be working on with my therapist, obviously. Beloved is strongly encouraging me to get an agent to work with for my novels. Again, white hot terror shoots through me at the thought of engaging in that process.

Beloved is of the opinion that all I need to do is get angry enough at the situation and I will just sweep this obstacle aside. I kinda foolishly hoped that I could just blog on topics that I felt like writing about and make some money that way. Taking a step back and looking at things realistically, I have to admit, my blogging on stuff that I'm interested in hasn't done much for my readership here. It leaves me feeling like maybe I'm not terribly interesting after all. Beloved assures me that I am interesting, I just need to market myself.

All I know is that something has to change or my dream of being a professional author is just not going to happen. It makes me wish that there was a pill that made everything better. I'd feel less ashamed of the medication if it made all these damn things easier. All the drugs do is take the edge off of the mood swings and quiet the noise in my head. I know these are big things because they allow me to function.

It feels like I'm just not making progress and that I'm doomed to be struggling with these stupid fears. The fears are the glass wall between me and my destination. It's awful to have yourself as your own worst enemy.