08/27/2008 Writing Jobs and Links

7 Responses to “08/27/2008 Writing Jobs and Links”

1. Jenn Mattern (6 comments) on August 27th, 2008 6:29 am
   

   I obviously don’t agree with your definition on what makes a “professional” (which is fine – discussion is a good thing), but I find it interesting. I’d like to throw another scenario or two at you, and see where it falls within your definition for curiosity’s sake.

   I work in public relations. Any certification / accreditation in the industry (in the US at least) is strictly optional. It’s done by a private organization which many PR “professionals” choose not to join for legitimate reasons (in my case b/c I was an early specialist in online PR, and I refuse to follow rules and guidelines from an often-outdated organization that can’t keep up with the changing roles and technologies in the field adequately yet – it’s been a huge problem in our industry). Does that mean those who choose an optional certification (even if it means little “officially” and comes from an organization out of touch with its own industry) are “professionals” whereas I’m not? There’s chatter about whether it would be beneficial to have mandatory accreditation / certification. While I don’t see it happening any time soon, if it did, would we suddenly all become “professionals” even though what we do wouldn’t have changed in the slightest?

   And one more example. In most areas here that I’m aware of, you must be a certified teacher to teach in public schools – and we have a lot of lousy teachers and lousy schools, especially as you get closer to the city. At the same time, we have some amazing private schools in the area whose teachers may not have to be certified (those rules vary all over the place). So would an excellent teacher in an excellent private school who isn’t certified not be a “professional” while a relatively inexperienced but certified teacher in a public school is?

   Just playing devil’s advocate.

   Jenn Matterns last blog post..What Makes Someone a Professional Blogger?
2. John Hewitt (763 comments) on August 27th, 2008 7:59 am
   

   Jenn,

   If you don’t NEED certification to do the job, then no, it doesn’t count. PR organizations may offer certification, but anyone can call themselves a PR person without any legal consequences. Anyone can call themselves a writer or a blogger with no legal repercussions. Doctors, lawyers. real estate agents, psychiatrists (not psychologists), all need the certification to legally do their job. They must pass some sort of test or other screening process and receive certification in the state that they operate in. That is why their careers are considered professions. Only in recent years has “professional” been expanded to include other things, in much the same way that anyone feels they can use “gourmet” these days. I always laugh when I see “gourmet” TV Dinners, gourmet and TV dinner are diametrically opposing terms.
3. Jenn Mattern (6 comments) on August 27th, 2008 8:11 am
   

   So if they do pass mandatory certification rules, we’d suddenly then be “professionals?” More importantly what about the teacher issue where it’s “needed” for some, but not for others in the same line of work? And on that note, what about different rules in different countries? If a real estate agent here is a professional, couldn’t a case be made that anyone doing the same work is just as much of one, even if they were in another country where such certification isn’t required?

   And I promise… that’s the last of my questions – just picking at the gray areas.

   Jenn Matterns last blog post..What Makes Someone a Professional Blogger?
4. John Hewitt (763 comments) on August 27th, 2008 10:14 am
   

   If a teacher has passed state certification, they are a professional. In a place where anyone can call themselves a teacher, they are not professionals. As for other countries, that is that country’s issue.

   I understand that you are using your designation to differentiate between “amateurs” and “professionals”. But as you demonstrate, in the blogging world, there are no set rules to differentiate between the two. According to your guidelines, I am not a professional because I do not make enough money to support myself. To throw your own argument back at you. If I made the same amount some countries in which the dollar is particularly strong, I could live reasonably well. So even by your definitions, my country of residence could determine whether or not I was a “professional” blogger.
5. Jenn Mattern (6 comments) on August 27th, 2008 10:30 am
   

   I guess the teacher issue is just a tough one for me with this, because it’s not area-based, so it’s not a place where anyone can call themselves a teacher – it’s an issue between hiring institutions (those more government-mandated versus private institutions).

   Excellent point regarding global bloggers. With my basic thoughts on the issue, I certainly wouldn’t argue that someone wasn’t a professional blogger if they were earning $100-200 / month, and that were a good income where they live, as opposed to someone like me, where that would barely cover the electric bill this month (on the high end).

   Always good to hear different opinions and the logic behind why people feel the way they feel about things. Thanks for sharing yours.

   Jenn Matterns last blog post..When it Rains it Pours (Writing Gigs that is!)
6. John Hewitt (763 comments) on August 27th, 2008 11:25 am
   

   Hi Jenn,

   I’m closer to the $1000 a month mark, but I get your point. Here’s another issue though. I earn my money strictly through advertising. Many bloggers use their sites to generate assignments or to sell their own materials. Those assignments might make for a good living, but is that really blogging income?

   John Hewitts last blog post..How Technical Writers Gather Information: Using the product
7. Jenn Mattern (6 comments) on August 27th, 2008 11:53 am
   

   That’s one of the things I touched on in my post regarding my own blogging – for me (because my interest is in earning from the publishing directly), I’m not counting my service referrals from my sites (and they’ve been very effective for that). That’s not to say those things shouldn’t be considered when thinking about the value of blogging, but I wouldn’t call it a consideration in whether someone’s a professional blogger (in those cases, the blog isn’t an actual income “source” but rather a marketing / networking tool – and if we call them professional bloggers, we’d also have to call a fitness guru who gets any business from article marketing a “professional writer,” right? – and let’s not do that lol).

   At my best I was doing something like $4-5k collectively for my blogs (I was running about a dozen active ones at the time). Now I recently let go of one of my “big three” to focus on my main two, which have each slipped so far as to only be earning a few hundred per month each. So priority-wise for me before I call myself a professional blogger / career blogger / or whatever you want to call it would be getting those two blogs (freelance writing blog and business blog) earning at least $1-2k per month regularly, with my fewer smaller blogs picking up the slack to reach that $3-4k goal before I’ll finally make it a full-time endeavor.

   Whether I get the blogging income to where I want or not, the one thing I’m absolutely certain of is that I’ll likely be blogging for the rest of my life. It’s one of those things that’s remained to be a passion first, and if I’m ever lucky enough to call that my actual career, I won’t be able to stop counting my blessings.

   Jenn Matterns last blog post..What Makes Someone a Professional Blogger?