A blog (a contraction of the term “web log“)^[1] is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

So essentially is the act (continuous) of of creating new content and adding to your weblog with frequent posts. Now with that said there are a couple of questions that arise:

1. What does “Frequent” entail?
2. Why does how frequent i write matter?

1.What does “Frequent” entail

Well this is all dependent on you and what your underlying objectives that you hope to achieve with your site. For example if you want a place to casually document an event, progress with a project of just the daily happenings in your life then you should decide on the frequency that best suits your needs.

So if you are a soccer mom who wants to have a web-accessible place to share the photos from your son’s last soccer tournament you may only decide to write when a tournament happens or some other relevant event for the soccer team like an award’s ceremony.

Conversely if you were the inventor of a new iPhone app and were trying to get more feedback and gauge the buzz around your application, then you would likely have to blog with greater frequency to keep a more detailed log of daily events and developments.

2.Why does how frequent i write matter?

The most important thing to remember is why you are writing, and your goals as stated before. Contrary to popular belief blogging effectively can be a an involved process, that takes time and commitment.

If your goal is to increase your presence on the Internet, reaching new audiences, improving sales or gauging customer feedback then you will need to be actively writing content. Generally speaking if you take the buzz that is currently surrounding the iPad, you will want to read the latest breaking news, from the most reliable sources about the tablet. As a result the chances are you will end up going to sites with fresh, constantly updating content like Engadget, CNET, Ars Technica, PCMag, or lifehacker to get news about what is buzzing about the device. Thus if you ran a site like a Engadget you would have to write with a lot of frequency to satisfy the readers thirst, and more importantly to remain ahead of the competition in the ever-growing, competitive field of SEO and search engine ranking.

It is literally a constant battle to stay on top, and as a result you always need to have the latest and best to bring new and existing readers to your site and more importantly keep them there long enough to make sure your ultimate goal like getting them to interact with ads on your site so you can get paid! And this is where the a new burgeoning field is rapidly growing. Simply getting to the top and gaining a strong reader base is a tough job and it is important to believe to remain on top, you will have to be innovative and creative to keep your position.

But the question remains, “Seriously, can blogging be a job”? So lets talk the numbers and see what is really going on…

20,000 job postings matching “blogger” in Feb. 2010 vs ZERO in Jul. 2005!!!

It would be unwise to merely state there was a 20,000% increase in postings when you start off at zero but i think that is vital is to note the staggering growth in jobs being posted with the title or description “blogger” has dramatically between Jan. 2009 and Jan. 2010. Using this as a slightly better gauge i think it becomes more evident where things are going IN SPITE of the recession:

7,500 postings (Jan 2009) vs +/- 20,000 job postings (Jan 2010) = 266.666666667 % Growth

blogger Job Trends

blogger jobs

Naturally one may ask how much it actually pays to be a writer, and as of February 2010 according to indeed.com jobs matching the term “blogger” are demanding pay of between $20,000 to $100,00+ a year is starting to look like serious business. This is perfect for recent college graduates who are usually pretty proficient in a particular field, internet and search engine aware, as well as capable of putting together words in an insightful manner to convey a message to a reader.

Some of the main job titles that were linked to the term “blogger” were:

• Writer / Photographer
• City Guide – Such as New York city guide, Miami city guide, Las Vegas city guide
• Writer (Work at Home)  - My favorite
• U.S. Politics: Current Events Guide
• Neighborhood Advocate – Writer
• Recreation Enthusiasts
• Home & Living Specialists
• Travel Enthusiasts
• Online Politics Writers (25)
• Transportation Enthusiasts & Experts
• Style & Fashion / Spa & Beauty
• Gadgets & Tech Enthusiasts
• Public Relations Manager

I think other than perhaps “Public Relations Manager” and possibly “Writer” it is pretty easy to see that a lot of the jobs are looking to leverage your existing knowledge of something that interests you personally like politics, travel or fashion and make it your career. I guess travelling and exploring exotic locations while taking pictures, videos, audio clips, and simply expunging on your experiences could just get you to quit your dull 9 to 5 job and go in search of some adventure.

Beware of the Caveats

A lot of people who do not have a lot of understanding of SEO, or are not often too concerned about the quality of the work will often outsource their needs for cheap, and buy articles in batches so they can gradually populate a site with content, to increase their visibility online and with search engines.

Do not expect to be a rockstar overnight, commanding high pay with fancy interviews and job offers being flung at your inbox. Most of the time you will have to demonstrate consistent, and verifiable references and a well established site to get to the more lucrative positions. All this means is that the issue of frequency, and also quality will become a factor, so you will need to be aware of keyword competition at least as well as understanding of SEO best practices and tricks, all of which can take  bit of time to develop.

However, just because the a search engine likes you it does not mean that a reader will. It is extremely apparent to the reader when the content has been “farmed out”, or bought in batches. There is a lack of quality control as the articles are posted in such large numbers, and considering the menial pay for such large volumes of work, the quality of the content often suffers, not to mention the fact that there are various issues with localising and spelling that may need to also be taken into account.

Conclusion

Unfortunately for some writing content and blogging does require creativity and the ability to think quickly on your toes, so for those interested in plagiarism, and the old copy-and-paste then it is not the profession for you. As much as the Internet has grown, a lot of companies who hire, and pay top dollar expect that they are getting rich, ORIGINAL content, and luckily thanks to great tools like copyscape.com it is pretty easy to sniff out a plagiarized article.

It is not easy work, and becoming a reputable and established blogger can take time, as well as a number of considerations like competition for what you want to do, the detailed nature of your chosen subject matter, your comfortability with the content as well as ability to adjust your tone, and writing style to cater to various audiences.

In my opinion i think that there are definitely opportunities that exist and they are not always for technically or SEO savvy types, what is more important is a firm grasp of your particular field or expertise, and the ability to effectively communicate a message to your audience in a clear and concise manner. I avoided the term writer on purpose as blogs can take a variety of forms, whether they be a video blog (vlog), a podacast or corporate blog, or simple text based personal blogs, thus as i said before the emphasis is more on relating a concept to a reader using your chosen type of media.

But with the numbers the way they are it seems that the chance of being able to work from your favorite coffee shop, sipping lates, working on your own schedule, and articulating about what you love could actually be a reality right now, as content and blogging are turning into very serious careers. I only looked at indeed.com but i think if needed an anylsis of trends for postings on other job boards like monster.com, and careerbuilder.com would also reveal the same thing, blogging is getting serious in 2010.

So with all that said… START BLOGGING!

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Hence comes in this nifty little jquery plugin, it allows you to grab parameters from the url and then process them accordingly. One way that this could be useful is if you wanted to detect a page state or to display or hide an element depending on the state.

You can download the plugin here and its also fairly light too which is good.

Here is an example of the source, its relatively short so i am posting it here and you can give it a try:

Javascript

/* Copyright (c) 2006 Mathias Bank (http://www.mathias-bank.de)
* Dual licensed under the MIT (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php)
* and GPL (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php) licenses.
*
* Thanks to Hinnerk Ruemenapf - http://hinnerk.ruemenapf.de/ for bug reporting and fixing.
*/
jQuery.extend({
/**
* Returns get parameters.
*
* If the desired param does not exist, null will be returned
*
* @example value = $.getURLParam("paramName");
*/
getURLParam: function(strParamName){
var strReturn = "";
var strHref = window.location.href;
var bFound=false;

var cmpstring = strParamName + "=";
var cmplen = cmpstring.length;

if ( strHref.indexOf("?") > -1 ){
var strQueryString = strHref.substr(strHref.indexOf("?")+1);
var aQueryString = strQueryString.split("&");
for ( var iParam = 0; iParam < aQueryString.length; iParam++ ){
if (aQueryString[iParam].substr(0,cmplen)==cmpstring){
var aParam = aQueryString[iParam].split("=");
strReturn = aParam[1];
bFound=true;
break;
}

}
}
if (bFound==false) return null;
return strReturn;
}
});

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

<title>Get the URL prameter with jQuery</title>
</head>
<body>
<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<script>
// Load jQuery
google.load("jquery", "1");
</script>
<script src="http://www.koders.com/javascript/fid589B53905C9C92AFB7D81C3FBAB9911BE65C24C8.aspx?s=%22Justin+Palmer%22" type="text/javascript"></script>
<style>

/** Get URL Params **/

#hidden_message, #hide_message{
display:none;
}
</style>

<body>

<h1> Welcome to the test Page</h1>

<h3> <a id="show_message" href="?=1"> Show Hidden Message </a>  <a id="hide_message" href="?=0"> Hide this Message </a></h3>

<h3 id="hidden_message"><em> This is the hidden message </em> and the Parameter</h3>
</body>
</html>

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