You’re counting the hours until you can go home and you’re spending more time on Facebook than doing actual work – is it time to quit your day job and start blogging full-time? A dream of many, an accomplishment of few. Blogging full-time may seem wonderful and glamorous from the outside, but – as most of us will know by now – it’s actually hard work. As any independent trying to make a living in this cold, harsh world, you’re going to face a lot of obstacles. Are you tough enough to face the broken business?

Professional versus Casual
While you may dream of your blog reaching the top and going after the big bucks, others consider it as their hobby and want to leave the business aspect for what it is. No negotiating about advertising prices or return, no business strategy or stressing out about stats. That’s perfectly fine, we all want different things out of life and our blogs – but it does mess with the balance. You see, if a brand or company wants to place advertorials or gain visibility, will they choose the professional blogger who will charge them fair money for it or the hobby blogger who has a decent audience and is happy with free products?

The problem is that so many of us (including myself) often don’t have the business background we need. Big bloggers hire agents or managers to represent them – they are the ones that do the negotiating and seal the deals. Unless you have that business experience yourself or someone to guide you along the way, you’re probably quite lost in a business meeting and don’t know what you really should be asking for. 

Cynical versus Realistic
I was once an idealistic teen, dreaming of a career in fashion and not knowing much about it. Now I’m a tad more realistic twenty-something that has learned a few things along the way. There will always be people who’ll try to take advantage of you, but one day we all get sick of working for free – whether it is as a blogger or an independent in any business. If you are trying to make a career out of it, talk to a lot of different people in the business, teach yourself a few things by reading books or the many tips on IFB and taking advice from experienced people and practice your business skills. Most of all: know what your blog or business is worth. It may be hard to determine, but it’s definitely not nothing. 

So is this business really broken? Fact is that every business has its difficulties, and it’s up to you to overcome them. That is, if you actually care about taking it to the next level, otherwise you can just go about and do your thing the way you always have – but remember that your blog always will be worth something: so maybe next time you can start negotiating about prices after all? Or here’s another crazy idea: let’s start a worldwide union for bloggers and see how that works out. Think of how much better our motivational business picture would look.

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