There are a lot of people who blog or otherwise create stuff to make money online.  Clearly, creating content for pay or remuneration (e.g. ad revenues, affiliate sales driven by blogging content) of some kind is highly valued, especially by those who receive money for their efforts.

Sometimes I get the feeling that members of this group look down on the amateur, the creator who works without any significant pay, both for:

• their relative lack of professionalism or credentials;
• the fact that they are willing to put their creative content out for public display without remuneration.

Without getting into the whole “free” debate (i.e. sometimes it’s profitable in the long term to give away your creative work for free), I came across the following passage in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow that may put the amateur’s desire to create in a different perspective:

From Chapter 6, The Flow of Thought, p. 131:

In today’s world we have come to neglect the habit of writing because so many other media of communication have taken its place.  Telephones and tape recorders, computers and fax machines are more efficient in conveying news.  If the only point to writing were to transmit information, then it would deserve to become obsolete.  But the point of writing is to create information, not simply to pass it along.  In the past, educated persons used journals and personal correspondence to put their experiences in words, which allowed them to reflect on what had happened during the day.  The prodigiously detailed letters so many Victorians wrote are an example of how people created patterns of order out of the mainly random events impinging on their consciousness.  The kind of material we write in diaries and letters does not exist before it is written down.  It is the slow, organically growing process of thought involved in writing that lets the ideas emerge in the first place.

Not so long ago, it was acceptable to be an amateur poet or essayist.  Nowadays if one does not make some money (however pitifully little) out of writing, it’s considered to be a waste of time.  It is taken as downright shameful for a man past twenty to indulge in versification unless he receives a check to show for it.  And unless one has great talent, it is indeed useless to write hoping to achieve great profit or fame.  But it is never a waste to write for intrinsic reasons.  First of all, writing gives the mind a disciplined means of expression.  It allows one to record events and experiences so that they can be easily recalled, and relived in the future.  It is a way to analyze and understand experiences, a self-communication that brings order to them.

Flow was published in 1990, just as Tim Berners-Lee was starting to publicly describe the concept of the World Wide Web (this fancy, wonderful layer of technology which uses the Internet to store and transmit text, hyperlinked content, images, audio, and video).  The Web, as we know it, sprang into existence in 1992 and changed the world.  Web technology, coupled with innovative business models, has partially negated one of Csikszentmihalyi’s assertions:  you don’t need to have great creative talent as a writer to achieve great profit or fame, although you do (still) need an assortment of other skills like:

• drive
• work ethic
• networking
• certain technical skills
• and business acumen

in order to make money in this new world.

(And, to be fair, you didn’t always need great talent to be a “successful” creator in the pre-Web era, but you needed backers and a marketing machine behind you.)

But the appeal of paid content creation doesn’t replace or destroy intrinsic reasons for making stuff, free or not.  In other words, content creation doesn’t have to be a means to make money.

As Mr. C notes above, making stuff is a way to remember, and make sense of, the events of our lives.  The acts of writing, painting, songwriting, etc. helps us take the ideas in our minds and apply some order to their chaos.

The biggest change of the past two decades is that it’s now easier than ever to make our formerly private musings and reflections public.  Mass distribution is almost effortless.  The difficult part, though, is that it can be a lot more frightening to expose your work to the world at large than the people that you actually know or have contact with.

Thus, while more and more amateurs have the opportunity to put their work out for public view, there’s no shortage of detractors or critics to tell them what they are doing wrong.  Moreover, on the Web the amateur is on a similar footing as the commercial writer, artist, musician, etc. who is used to getting paid for his or her work – they have equal opportunity for exposure.

I’m not going to accuse all professional content creators, bloggers, or Internet marketers of giving the amateur short shrift.  Neither do I accuse all of the above for taking these kinds of positions because they feel threatened by the unpaid content creator.

It’s just that sometimes I get irritated by people who do look down on:

• the Blogger user who retreads a familiar blog theme
• the Wordpress.com user who writes about their day, their cat, their hobbies
• the amateur photographer
• the MySpace user who shares their love of … whatever…

As far as I’m concerned, if someone’s got the chutzpah to let their stuff hang out in public, then bully for them.  That’s a hard thing to do, so you have to respect their desire to try that.

In line with Mr. C’s ideas, it would be wonderful if more people try to take on things like journaling, digital art, fiction writing, etc. to go through this exercise of reflection and idea transcription. Instead of numbing their minds with drugs, drink, or TV, wasting their cognitive surplus, I think it’s a really cool idea that some people actually want to take time to try to make some sense of their lives.  Tools like social media not only provide a platform to communicate from, they also make it easier for souls searching for enlightenment to find kindred spirits.

You know, the original purpose of the Web and social media?

At the same time, if someone wants to try to monetize, why not?

My basic message is this:   live and let live. Respect each others motivations.  Recognize that it takes courage to put your blood, sweat, and tears before a live audience for the first time (remember?)  Also recognize that it’s not criminal, unethical, or wrong to create for pay.

Above all, if you create for pay, don’t feel threatened because there’s so much “free” competition.  Respond by raising your game, by putting out more value, and by being a worthy example of the professional. If you see some undiscovered talent, be generous enough to lend a hand, however small.

I just think it’s awesome that we have some decent tools available to help us all stretch and develop our skills.  That kind of growth is something that we should all encourage and support.

Does this make sense to you?  Or should the amateur just keep filling their shoebox with unpublished writing and keep their sketchbooks hidden away?  What do you think?

Other posts that you might enjoy reading:

• A video on creativity, fulfillment, and flow
• How to lighten your mind to create better content
• Are you a sequential or random-access doer?
• Why do you blog if not for money?
• Why does the world need another blog topics post?