Bloggers work under constant round-the-clock stress, to the point of exhaustion and even death.
They work very hard, sometimes to exhaustion. Many on piecework for published posts. This is a typical description of the digital age. And yet it can be called differently: their home is their work.
A growing number of active and energetic workers and entrepreneurs at home, armed with computers and smartphones, are working hard in the face of the physical and emotional stress of the Internet industry, which requires inexhaustible news flow and commentary.
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Of course, bloggers may work in other places, and they themselves openly declare their enthusiasm for this continuous work, and perhaps the possibility of creating a global media market without large upfront investments. But at the same time, some are beginning to wonder if everything is in order here. Over the past few months, two of their colleagues have suddenly died.
Two weeks ago in the city of North Lauderdale (North Lauderdale) in Florida, at the age of sixty, Russe Show, a blogger who successfully wrote on IT topics, died of heart failure. In December, another IT blogger, Marc Orchant, 50, died from a massive heart attack. The third, forty-year-old Om Malik (Om Malik), suffered a heart attack in December.
Many bloggers complain of loss or weight gain, sleep problems, exhaustion and other diseases associated with constant stress with constant search and work with information and news, which, like the entire Internet, are always in non-stop mode.
Of course, there is no official diagnosis of death from blogging, and the premature death of two people certainly cannot qualify as an epidemic. There is also no complete certainty that it was the stress of work that caused their death. However, friends and families of the deceased, as well as their closest colleagues, say that these incidents made them think about the danger that their way of working and living presents.
Even those who work for themselves and earn good money are experiencing problems.
“I'm still alive!” Says Michael Arrington, creator and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular IT blog. The site brought millions of revenue on advertising, but it all came at a very high price. Mr. Arrington says that over the past three years he has gained 30 pounds, earned a strong sleep disturbance and turned his home into an office for himself and his four employees. “At some stage, I will have a nervous breakdown, I will go to the hospital, or something else like that will happen.”
“This is unbearable,” he says.
It is not entirely clear how many people earn their living by blogging, but, of course, we are talking about a few thousand, and maybe tens of thousands.
The emergence of this class of information workers takes place in parallel with the development of the online industry. At first, publicism spread on the Internet, followed by advertising.
Even in already established companies, the Internet has changed the nature of work, allowing them to organize virtual offices and work from anywhere at any convenient time. But this flexibility also has a downside - employees are relieved of all kinds of office worries. And for obsessive workers, this can mean one thing: never leave your home.
For some, blogging is profitable, but those who are at the bottom of this business can earn no more than $ 10 per post, and in some cases their work is paid on a sliding bonus scale, which at the same time as awarding success, requires even more effort. There are plenty of online chroniclers who narrate and reflect on sports, politics, business, celebrities and all sorts of other things. Some people write for fun, but thousands work for publishers as employees or contractors, or start their own online media business for profit.
One of the most competing categories is IT field blogs and news blogs. They are among themselves in a fierce and continuous struggle to release news, identify new products and expose corporate errors.
The winner gets the attention of the audience and, as a result, advertisers. As a rule, bloggers of such sites receive money for each post, but in some cases their payment depends on the number of people who read the material. Their audience is formed by sensations, the volume of published material, or both factors simultaneously.
Some sites, such as those owned by Gawker Media, pay bloggers fees and then bonuses when they reach their goal, for example, if their pages are viewed 100,000 times a month. Then the plank rises, as with trading commissions: the more you write, the more you earn.
Some major sites bloggers say that most of them earn from $ 30,000 per month, some around $ 70,000. Some indefatigable bloggers manage to achieve a six-figure income, and some entrepreneurs have managed to build mini-empires in the network that generate incomes of hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. While the rest, who are trying to make this career, they say that all that they can count on is $ 1,000 per month.
Speed ​​is of paramount importance. It should be late even for a millisecond, readership, links and a large share of the profits for advertising will go to the author of another post on the same topic.
"This does not happen, so I would not worry about how not to miss the material, even when I sleep," - says Mr. Arrington.
“Wouldn’t it be great to know for sure that no blogger or journalist writes anything from 8 pm until dawn? We all could then take a break, ”he adds. “But this will never happen!”
This rivalry makes you always alert. Twenty-two-year-old Mat Bucknen is simply created for this work. It works on clicks for Gizmodo, this is a popular site for Gawker Media, which publishes news on various technical things. Mat lives in a small apartment in Brooklyn, in which his room is at the same time his office.
He says that he sleeps about five hours a day, and often he does not have time for proper nutrition. He regularly feeds himself with protein supplements, which he mixes with coffee.
But make no mistake: Mat Bucknen, a recent past graduate of New York University (New York University), loves his job. He says that he earns (without specifying how much) by what he writes and interacts with readers in a global discussion of the latest and most significant products.
“The fact that several thousand people read me every day is just great,” he says. But at the same time it is tiring "Sometimes you just want to lie down!"
Sometimes he involuntarily falls asleep in front of the computer.
“If there is no news from Mat, I’ll think he’s dead,” says Brian Lam, editor of Gizmodo. "Such thoughts have already visited me four or five times."
Mr. Lam, who, as a manager, has a much higher salary, works even more. It is known that he spends all night long in his home office in San Francisco (San Francisco), editing his website. He says that he was well prepared for this kind of testing, in the past he was engaged in Thai boxing.
“I used to take a punch and therefore I am good at this job!”
Brian Lam says that he is concerned that his people can literally burn at work, so he makes them take breaks, even take time off. But he adds that they are still constantly under terrible pressure — external, internal and financial. The pay-per-click evolution (pay-per-click) has given greater importance to reader traffic and financial returns, but not to journalism in general.
In the case of Russell Shaw, it is not entirely clear what role stress played in his death. Ellen Green (Ellen Green), who met with him for 13 months, testifies that the pressure placed on himself was monstrous. She says that they often discussed options for creating a healthier lifestyle for him, especially after the death of his friend, Mark Orchant.
“The blogging community, looking at this, says:“ Oh no, it happened so quickly with two energetic people! ”Says Ellen. And everyone asks - “Can it happen to me too? !!”
As for Russell Shaw, he did not die right behind his desk. He died at a hotel in San Jose, California, where he flew in to cover a technical conference. In his last letter to the editor of ZDNet, he wrote: “Something I do not feel well. I'll post a little later today or tomorrow "...
Translation is made for the online magazine of Internet business.
A growing number of active and energetic workers and entrepreneurs at home, armed with computers and smartphones, are working hard in the face of the physical and emotional stress of the Internet industry, which requires inexhaustible news flow and commentary.
')
Of course, bloggers may work in other places, and they themselves openly declare their enthusiasm for this continuous work, and perhaps the possibility of creating a global media market without large upfront investments. But at the same time, some are beginning to wonder if everything is in order here. Over the past few months, two of their colleagues have suddenly died.
Two weeks ago in the city of North Lauderdale (North Lauderdale) in Florida, at the age of sixty, Russe Show, a blogger who successfully wrote on IT topics, died of heart failure. In December, another IT blogger, Marc Orchant, 50, died from a massive heart attack. The third, forty-year-old Om Malik (Om Malik), suffered a heart attack in December.
Many bloggers complain of loss or weight gain, sleep problems, exhaustion and other diseases associated with constant stress with constant search and work with information and news, which, like the entire Internet, are always in non-stop mode.
Of course, there is no official diagnosis of death from blogging, and the premature death of two people certainly cannot qualify as an epidemic. There is also no complete certainty that it was the stress of work that caused their death. However, friends and families of the deceased, as well as their closest colleagues, say that these incidents made them think about the danger that their way of working and living presents.
Even those who work for themselves and earn good money are experiencing problems.
“I'm still alive!” Says Michael Arrington, creator and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular IT blog. The site brought millions of revenue on advertising, but it all came at a very high price. Mr. Arrington says that over the past three years he has gained 30 pounds, earned a strong sleep disturbance and turned his home into an office for himself and his four employees. “At some stage, I will have a nervous breakdown, I will go to the hospital, or something else like that will happen.”
“This is unbearable,” he says.
It is not entirely clear how many people earn their living by blogging, but, of course, we are talking about a few thousand, and maybe tens of thousands.
The emergence of this class of information workers takes place in parallel with the development of the online industry. At first, publicism spread on the Internet, followed by advertising.
Even in already established companies, the Internet has changed the nature of work, allowing them to organize virtual offices and work from anywhere at any convenient time. But this flexibility also has a downside - employees are relieved of all kinds of office worries. And for obsessive workers, this can mean one thing: never leave your home.
For some, blogging is profitable, but those who are at the bottom of this business can earn no more than $ 10 per post, and in some cases their work is paid on a sliding bonus scale, which at the same time as awarding success, requires even more effort. There are plenty of online chroniclers who narrate and reflect on sports, politics, business, celebrities and all sorts of other things. Some people write for fun, but thousands work for publishers as employees or contractors, or start their own online media business for profit.
One of the most competing categories is IT field blogs and news blogs. They are among themselves in a fierce and continuous struggle to release news, identify new products and expose corporate errors.
The winner gets the attention of the audience and, as a result, advertisers. As a rule, bloggers of such sites receive money for each post, but in some cases their payment depends on the number of people who read the material. Their audience is formed by sensations, the volume of published material, or both factors simultaneously.
Some sites, such as those owned by Gawker Media, pay bloggers fees and then bonuses when they reach their goal, for example, if their pages are viewed 100,000 times a month. Then the plank rises, as with trading commissions: the more you write, the more you earn.
Some major sites bloggers say that most of them earn from $ 30,000 per month, some around $ 70,000. Some indefatigable bloggers manage to achieve a six-figure income, and some entrepreneurs have managed to build mini-empires in the network that generate incomes of hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. While the rest, who are trying to make this career, they say that all that they can count on is $ 1,000 per month.
Speed ​​is of paramount importance. It should be late even for a millisecond, readership, links and a large share of the profits for advertising will go to the author of another post on the same topic.
"This does not happen, so I would not worry about how not to miss the material, even when I sleep," - says Mr. Arrington.
“Wouldn’t it be great to know for sure that no blogger or journalist writes anything from 8 pm until dawn? We all could then take a break, ”he adds. “But this will never happen!”
This rivalry makes you always alert. Twenty-two-year-old Mat Bucknen is simply created for this work. It works on clicks for Gizmodo, this is a popular site for Gawker Media, which publishes news on various technical things. Mat lives in a small apartment in Brooklyn, in which his room is at the same time his office.
He says that he sleeps about five hours a day, and often he does not have time for proper nutrition. He regularly feeds himself with protein supplements, which he mixes with coffee.
But make no mistake: Mat Bucknen, a recent past graduate of New York University (New York University), loves his job. He says that he earns (without specifying how much) by what he writes and interacts with readers in a global discussion of the latest and most significant products.
“The fact that several thousand people read me every day is just great,” he says. But at the same time it is tiring "Sometimes you just want to lie down!"
Sometimes he involuntarily falls asleep in front of the computer.
“If there is no news from Mat, I’ll think he’s dead,” says Brian Lam, editor of Gizmodo. "Such thoughts have already visited me four or five times."
Mr. Lam, who, as a manager, has a much higher salary, works even more. It is known that he spends all night long in his home office in San Francisco (San Francisco), editing his website. He says that he was well prepared for this kind of testing, in the past he was engaged in Thai boxing.
“I used to take a punch and therefore I am good at this job!”
Brian Lam says that he is concerned that his people can literally burn at work, so he makes them take breaks, even take time off. But he adds that they are still constantly under terrible pressure — external, internal and financial. The pay-per-click evolution (pay-per-click) has given greater importance to reader traffic and financial returns, but not to journalism in general.
In the case of Russell Shaw, it is not entirely clear what role stress played in his death. Ellen Green (Ellen Green), who met with him for 13 months, testifies that the pressure placed on himself was monstrous. She says that they often discussed options for creating a healthier lifestyle for him, especially after the death of his friend, Mark Orchant.
“The blogging community, looking at this, says:“ Oh no, it happened so quickly with two energetic people! ”Says Ellen. And everyone asks - “Can it happen to me too? !!”
As for Russell Shaw, he did not die right behind his desk. He died at a hotel in San Jose, California, where he flew in to cover a technical conference. In his last letter to the editor of ZDNet, he wrote: “Something I do not feel well. I'll post a little later today or tomorrow "...
Translation is made for the online magazine of Internet business.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/287788/
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