Time to give up on blogging networks

Blogging sucks.

Well, maybe I should make that a bit more clear: Blogging for a blogging network sucks.

There's a reason for this: The people behind blogging networks have no idea what they are doing. And for very low monthly or per-post fees, they expect their bloggers to not only supply their content but to bring visitors, and ad-click revenue, to their networks.

Blogging networks treat writers like garbage. That's what I've found, at least.

My first blogging network was b5 Media, where I blogged about residential real estate. I steadily grew the site's readership, increasing its visitors each and every month, sometimes by quite a bit. The pay wasn't great, but it was better than most blog networks, and it was steady.

Then b5 Media began counting its visitors a different way. Suddenly my monthly pay would be cut by about 75 percent. I decided that it was time to go.

I went to Today.com, where I wrote two blogs, for the princely fee of $1 a post. Still, the posts were easy to write. Why not? Well, because the geniuses at Today.com obviously had no idea how many site visitors would actually click on the ads on their blogs. Before long, the Today.com brain trust told me my pay rate was being changed. I'd be paid $2 for every 1,000 visitors to my blogs. That was below insulting, so off I went.

ContentQuake wasn't so bad. They always paid on time, even though their pay was bad. But it was a combination of pay-per-post and pay-per-visitors, so you knew what you were getting into. Unfortunately, last month, ContentQuake, too, ran out of money. Now they're not paying anything for bloggers. So long again, blogging network.

Finally, there's Creative Weblogging. The folks behind this blogging network gave me a whole two months before they decided that my blog wasn't making enough money. So they slashed my monthly pay from $140 to $28, and dropped my posting level to once a week. Add to this that they usually take a long time to pay each month's payment, and it's just about time to leave Creative Weblogging, too.

And that's it. No more blogging networks for me. And my advice for you? If you want to make money blogging, do your own thing. You won't make any money, probably, but at least you'll only have yourself to blame.