Money—Blogging—Creating

Heard a fascinating Terry Gross interview on “Fresh Air” with Lawrence Lessing about the internet, blogging, copyright and culture. The conversation focused on how people, mostly amateurs, upload creative content (writing, photos, video on every subject imaginable) to the web for free. Big sites like Google and YouTube make money off all this free content. Some well-created sites, including blogs and MySpace music pages, make small amounts of profit for the artists, but not on scale of the late 20th century.
Lessing thinks this is OK, because the idea of the amateur contributing to culture, as opposed to passively consuming mass media as we did through television and large publishing organizations, is coming back into vogue. Just as before the phonograph and radio many people played instruments and sang, now everyone can make a movie, create their own newspaper, or self-publish a song. Quality isn’t an issue, the action is what is important.
I fit into this argument. I write several blogs and am putting free drawing lessons on the web. I want people to draw as they did before photography was invented, because there is a hunger to create. Plus people miss Bob Ross…
However, I do want and need to make money eventually, because I am not an amateur. The question is how to do that. In the coming year I’ll be telling my Kloe readers more.
I hope all your holiday plans are going well.
And Happy Hanuka!
(student drawing combining Michelangelo with a Picasso portrait)