I Guess I'm a "Professional" Blogger Now

I've been toiling away in the blogging world--I hate the term "blogosphere," which has always sounded to me like some early-1960s Disney imagineer's attempt to sound futuristic--for six years now. I enjoy it and obviously don't do it for the bucks, of which there are none.

At least there weren't any bucks for this blogger until the other day.

Back in September, 2004, I signed up for Google AdSense. The deal is that Google places ads, in the case of this blog, at the bottom of the page. Every time a reader clicks on one of the ads, a few pennies are placed into an account in my name. Google doesn't even bother to send a check until the clicks amount to $100.00.

Frankly, after having earnestly checked at my click-count back in late-2004 and seeing only pennies being added, I had all but forgotten that I had Goodle AdSense on the site. In fact, the only time I ever did think about it was when I thought, in consideration of what a silly waste of page space it seemed to be, I should just get out of the agreement.

But, now I'm a professional blogger. A few weeks ago, the people at Google--yeah, the people I've criticized for letting the Chinese government limit its people's access to information, made a professional out of me. (See here and here.) It seems that after 3-years and 11-months, there had been enough clicks on the ads Google placed on this site for Google to cut a check to me.

The amount? A whopping $105.78. At the rate of little more than $26.00 per year, I am clearly on my way to making a mint as a blogger.

Yeah, I'll declare the check as income for 2008. But I don't think that I'll add "professional blogger" to the occupation line on my 1040.

By the way, the clicks for November so far amount to 11-cents. At roughly a penny a day for the month, it appears that my pace of rapacious material acquisition is falling off. At this rate, it'll take me twenty-seven years to get my second AdSense check.

Whenever it shows up, I'll be excited! And shocked.

[Instead of clicking on Google AdSense below, you can donate to this site. Of course, clicking won't involve any investment on your part. But 75% of what you donate, will go to three important causes. I'm still not in blogging for money. But if the AdSense people are willing to part with some pennies for my hobby or if readers are willing to donate on the PayPal button to the right, that's okay too. See here for more information.]