My friend Kal is a self confessed ‘Geek’. She has lead us into Facebook.com, Twitter.com, blogging and more recently, Geocaching.com, (but the later I admit to following her quite willingly).

I noticed on one of Kal’s profiles she described herself as a ‘professional blogger’. Like me, you may well ask how someone can earn a crust from blogging? So I thought I had better ask.
[Hot PJ]  Kal, how does someone earn a living from blogging?
[Kalena] I get asked this a lot, so I wrote an article about it which you can read here. To see how a couple of other bloggers make money, see Darren Rowse’s blog post “How I make Money Blogging“, and “The Road to Blogging Success” by Neerav Bhatt.

[Hot PJ] Many of the objections we hear from client’s are “..but I don’t have the time” or “who would be interested in reading my ramblings?” What would you say to that?
[Kalena] I would say, do you currently write client newsletters? Or send clients emails about your product or service? Do you send out brochures or sales letters? Then why not just publish these on a blog? Then all you have to do is add a post here and there and voila, you’re blogging. If it becomes a chore, don’t do it because people will sense your reluctance.

[Hot PJ] How much of ‘yourself’ do you think a blogger should put into their professional or business blog?
[Kalena] This is a balancing act. The best blogs are the ones where the writer’s own personality shines through. This gives them authenticity and a human element. Subscribers to my own blog at www.ask-kalena.com seem to like my casual, conversational style.

Surprisingly, my most popular posts are the irreverant ones such as Dumbass of the Week or Top 10 Dumbest Web Site Decisions. But obviously you can’t really blog this way unless you have a fair amount of freedom and aren’t shackled by certain corporate expectations. That’s why I deliberately moved my blog to it’s own domain. It was originally on our online training site at but I wanted to post more personal subjects and inject a sense of fun without having this casualness associated with the business.

[Hot PJ] Are there any blogging rules or etiquette, is it just open slather?
[Kalena] It depends. There are certainly lots of posts about blogging etiquette. But I think accepted etiquette depends on the blogger and the audience. Some bloggers like to steal content from other bloggers and post it as their own. That type of behaviour (site scraping) is universally scorned but in terms of content, it’s pretty much anything goes.

To some people a blog is a personal diary, to others it’s a series of articles, or a series of product announcements. It’s really up to you – there are no hard and fast rules. Compare this blog where the (Kiwi!) author blogs her daily outfits, with this blog, which is a series of news articles about the search industry. They both use the same blog software!

[Hot PJ] But what about libel or slander?
[Kalena] As far as I understand it, blogging is subject to the libel laws of the State or Country in which the blog is published (as opposed to the location of the blogger). More info check out the bloggers’ legal guide.

[Hot PJ] What do you mean by ‘published’? Does that mean if your blog is read worldwide you are subject to liable laws in every country?
[Kalena] No, I mean where the blog is hosted – so for example my blog is hosted on US servers and so it is *published* in the US.

[Hot PJ] Thanks Kal. Kalena Jordan is the search industry’s first agony aunt, check out her blog at: http://www.ask-kalena.com

Posted on April 22nd, 2009 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
Filed under: Marketing