Blogging and money

[clanpowell]

Apologies if this isn't the place to ask the question. Some friends of mine tell me they've been paid for blogging. Not a lot but still. Both write about very selfsufficientish stuff. Green parenting mostly. They get £25 a blog. They use a twitter based company and have to have some adverts to one side and put a disclaimer at the bottom.
Does anyone else on here do this? If so how?
I blog, currently keeping two going. See below-is that self advertising? sorry if it is, but the one is all about our self sufficient lifestyle here a la Correze. (The other is me generally ranting about stuff). Just trying to give the full picture.
Like everyone I have bills and taxes (Lots of these in France) to pay and the odd bit of cash from my (often bad weather enforced) internet ramblings would be welcome. I don't want loads. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I did but every little helps. Personally I'd rather everyone lived without money, I hate the stuff.
Anyone know what the tax picture in France is for doing this? Would I have to register (again or add to my current one) as an auto entrepreneur? I have got an English bank account.
General thoughts, opinions and rants welcome

[The Riff-Raff Element]

I have no idea how anyone makes money from blogging. I have been paid for writing, but that is entirely different. I always thought that any cash came from people clicking on the ads and so was dependent on the traffic.

As far as the tax is concerned, obviously you would have to declare any money earned, but unless it is a significant amount of your income (I have 30% in my mind, but I'd check that) then it just goes on a line entitled something like "autre prestations" on your declaration. If you were blogging about stuff directly concerned with your autoentrepreneur activities it might just be possible to include it with that. I'd ask at the tax office - they're usually very helpful and are not allowed to lie

[GeorgeSalt]

I don't see how you'd get paid a fixed amount per blog.. but simple things like Adwords or Skimlinks, etc, can generate a small income if you're happy to have adverts on your blog (with very little control over what appears). Plus, little thing like having an Amazon Associate account and using their links whenever you recommend a book or item that they sell. Or having an Amazon shop appear on the page.

Example..

There's this really good book I have and would recommend, called Booze for Free, by this guy called Andy Hamilton.

Now, anyone clicking on either link (one to the book, one to the page with all Andy's books) will get taken straight to Amazon, and if they buy the book (for the normal price), then I get a (very small) commission. Incidentally, if they buy anything else on that visit to Amazon, I also get the commission on that. It's only pennies because I don't work hard at it.

It would also be possible for the forum Administrators to have this happen automatically, and linked to the forum Associate account, every time Andy or the book get a mention in a thread.


Have a look at Ken Rockwell's camera pages. He manages to make a decent income from his site, with a combination of reviews, tips and blogging.

[clanpowell]

Cool, will look into both of those suggestions guys. I don't write very often and I'm just happy if someone reads one of them but "every little helps!"

[okra]

I was recently approached by a company Blogginbooks.de who publish bloggers work as a book. The process is quite time consuming but they publish your book for free, market it, you get a free copy and may even earn some royalties. It may be worth approaching them if you think you have enough material to convert your blog (maybe with some added writing or research into a publishable book). Our book is now on sale with Amazon UK and other sellers worldwide but we will not know how sales are progressing or if any royalties will eventuate for quite some time. But even if we don't earn anything we enjoyed the process and we have a free copy of our book.

Our book is called Olives, lemons and grapes: Towards self-sufficiency in food: a guide to growing your own in a Mediterranean or Subtropical climate. The whole process to publication took about 3 months and involved many hours writing and re-drafting.

[AlexSBayley]

If you want to get into the professional/paid side of blogging, there are heaps of resources out there. One place to start is the Problogger blog (I can't post links, but it's problogger dot net). Also look for blogger meetups in your area (try using meetup dot com to find one) and you'll almost certainly find people there who are involved in paid blogging and may have events/classes/resources/etc that you could get involved with. For women (I know the OP isn't, but others reading this maybe), BlogHer network is a good place to start -- they have various things for paid bloggers and a great annual conference with lots of information about how to get paid for blogging.