Blogging as a Career.

Recently there was a very interesting article on ZDNet, talking about the high-stress world of blogging for pay. The focus of the article is on the instantness of the Internet as a publishing medium, and the stress that's caused by the fact that anybody can get to any given story, and he who gets to the story first gets the most clicks.

One of the main points of the article is how there have been two fairly recent and fairly well-documented cases of bloggers having health problems, potentially related to the stress of their profession. It's great that blogging is now considered to be a very legitimate form of journalism, but it's unfortunate that in order to be successful at all at it, you need to be awake all hours of the day so you can be the blog that has the information first.

This is one of the things that admittedly makes me quite happy that I'm not really blogging for pay, or for another website where I'm stuck to someone else's publishing schedule. Although I'll admit I've had a few moments where I wasn't really sure I'd be able to get a post up onto the blog on time (my main goal is one per day, I haven't been strict with exactly when that post shows up, and sometimes a post will show up a few hours early or late, but since spring break there has been one post that corresponds with each day.

One thing I wonder about this relates to my intent to become a professional photographer. If this is what it's like to do freelance writing on the Internet, do some of the same stresses apply to being an independent or freelance photographer? Or will I find some job where I've got a predictable, reasonable schedule for shooting and delivering?

Maybe I'll start or be a part of a successful photo-blog. That would be cool.