>America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire

>This is what recent news is.In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers in the country.Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.

Currently, blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults.

According to different websites which I visited,there are over 20 million bloggers in America, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. It means almost 2 million Americans are getting paid by the word, the post, or the click — whether on their site or someone else’s.

This means that there are one percent Americans, or nearly 3 million people, who dare to put their opinion in front of the world, who are influenced by modern communications and are independent-minded.These people, can create new markets for a business, spark a social movement, or produce political change.This could make America the most noisily opinionated nation on earth.The IT age triggered many new professions, but blogging could well be the one with the most profound effect on human culture.After journalism, blogging can be the only profession with equal importance.

The discussion forums for for progressive politics and new technologies has now been applied to just about every other imaginable area of life, like, motherhood, health care, the arts, fashion,etc.What started as a hobby is becoming big business for newly emerging sites.Companies now depend upon their reviews given by these people.

According to the study and data given on different sites, bloggers in America are extremely well educated(Knowing the difference between their and our education system.We can say every educated Indian is extremely well educated): three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as “spokesbloggers” — paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting literally, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around — but it can also be quite profitable.

But there are also lots of barriers for professional blogging. Most bloggers for hire, pay $80 to get started, do it for about 35 months, and make a few hundred dollars. But a subgroup of these same bloggers are the true professionals who work at corporations, serve as highly paid blogging consultants.

Professionals who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging.Way more than a normal IT guy can earn by sitting even more hrs before the computer.

But its not IT field which is suffering,rather this has done a major impact on journalism.As bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined. In Washington alone, there are now 79% fewer employees of major newspapers than there were just few years ago.Also know this, Washington is easily the most blogged-about city in America, if not the world.

These bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. Some sites even pay writers by the click, which motivates blogger for doing whatever it takes to get noticed.

Recently United Kingdom just had a major scandal in which an official at 10 Downing Street had planned to leak to a friendly blogger all sorts of lurid stories about the Conservatives, complete with descriptions of secret sex tapes. The friendly blogger who was going to post it all thought it was an “absolutely brilliant” idea. But,someone blew the whistle.If in case the plot had gone through, it could have played a major role in the elections.

It has been observed that the poll that often got the most coverage was the one that was different from the others, regardless of whether it was right, or wrong. This is true with opinions, too: those on the extreme right or left, or those that are the most titillating, seem to drive the most traffic through their sites. The center doesn’t seem to have either the edge or the passion to grab the same kind of traffic.

For now, bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction. But what happens if they, too, lose work?Are they covered by unemployment insurance if tastes change and their sites go under? Are they considered journalists under shield laws? Are they subject to libel suits? Are there any limits to the opinions they churn out, or any standards to rein them in? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Panasonic outfitted bloggers with free Panasonic equipment; did that affect their opinions about the companies they wrote about? There are more questions than answers about America’s Newest Profession.

But one thing is for sure,it is hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind. Courses on blogging are now cropping up, and we can’t be far away from some School of Bloggerism. There is a lot of interest now in Twittering and Facebooking — but those venues don’t offer the career opportunities of blogging.

But with these millions of bloggers,writing and recording opinion,I wonder whether being the blogging capital of the world will help America compete in the global economy.Maybe the criticism will help them choosing the right products. Maybe it will create a resurgence in the art of writing and writing courses. Or serve as a safety net for out of work professionals in the crisis.But for how long?