How do you make money as a freelance blogger?

A question I get asked surprisingly rarely are “how do you make money as a freelance journalist”. Infact I only ever get this question when I go to the PLSA conferences and that’s because the PLSA let me use their press room and have private meetings with important people and make incisive comments to speakers which should get me thrown out. TBH I am a blogger, not a journalist and struggle to call myself “press”.

I did get thrown out of a recent event for being “press” because the organisers had promised the Pension Minister that there wouldn’t be any press in the room. It was encouraging Mary McDougall of the FT and John Greenwood of Corporate Advisers writing from within the rooms Mr TP spoke from, shows that press bans stop the likes of me and let the real pros do the job!

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How does “one” make money from being a freelance journalist?

The answer is hard to answer, the problem is I don’t. I don’t get paid for writing blogs for you on this blog and when my stuff gets used by others, I don’t generally get credited and certainly I don’t get paid!

Why should I? The moment I start taking money than the amount of value placed on this blog would reduce, not that it has a lot of value and I don’t suppose I’d get much money allowing ads to clog this thing up.

I’m not the less serious about what I write because I don’t get paid. Infact I find it liberating to write what I think not what other people want to hear or want others to hear.

Sometimes I get something sent me and I publish it and usually it is better than what I write and gets loads of reads. I do have a dashboard for my blog to tell me what gets read. Stuff about what I do at AgeWage doesn’t get a lot of reads, stuff about TB , the pension minister, gets lots of reads.

Luckily what TB says is worth reading which is why I like focussing on him. Emma Reynolds was as boring as an A4 pad with nothing written on it. Thanks Emma, hope you’re having fun in the Treasury.

This last week I have been invited to posh dinners and then turned away because they discover that I am not Henry Tapper the fabulous and influential CEO of AgeWage and Chair of Pension PlayPen and something to do with Pension SuperHaven (a title is yet to be agreed). Instead of these interesting things, I am a freelance journalist – another Henry Tapper altogether.

For those who are interested, I started working in this business in the early 1980s and have no intention of finishing , though I may be finished if the plague from my accident continues to cause me dysfunctions in other parts of my body. This is why I don’t run around a lot at the moment, believe you me it is a job keeping my body from leaking.

But you don’t want to hear that crap. You want to know how I make money from blogging and the only answer I can give is that it saves me the costs of attending PLSA by a substantial amount and as the PLSA events in March and October are the best for pensions , I consider my responsibilities for blogging important. Scroll along what I’ve written this last week you can see some complimentary things about the PLSA (the Conference) and what isn’t (Fraser Nelson at the Conference Dinner).

There are some great freelances who do make money and I’m talking of Padraig and the people who win awards at WTW media awards – which I go to , to moan into my laptop later! I blame my being honest, others blame my being crap.

I may have become a little more left wing since my accident, I certainly enjoy left wing people more than right wing ones, which probably make me a commie, but there are exceptions Guy.

My best friends are getting older and I don’t just mean in the normal way. I seem to be exercised by people older than me who know more than me and have experience of stuff that I’m still coming to grips with. I hope that I am seen the same way by those who are younger than me.

I think my friend Sophie who I spent time with up in Scotland is as important as the olde ones. I would put a photo up of her but she’s worked out that pictures on my blog don’t make for career progression. So I will stick with the old people who don’t care and like me are enjoying pensions that mean they don’t need to make money from my blog!