Pajama Entrepreneur

Marc Andreessen regrets he did not start blogging years ago and among his observations is this:

Writing a blog is way easier than writing a magazine article, a published paper, or a book — but provides many of the same benefits. I think it’s an application of the 80/20 rule — for 20% of the effort (writing a blog post but not editing and refining it the quality level required of a magazine article, a published paper, or a book), you get 80% of the benefit (your thoughts are made available to interested people very broadly). Arguably blogging is better because the distribution of a blog can be even broader than a magazine article, a published paper, or a book, at least in cases where the article/paper/book is restricted by a publisher to a limited readership base. This of course assumes that you’re not trying to make a living writing magazine articles or books, or you’re not trying to get tenure as a professor by publishing peer-reviewed research papers. However, at least in the former case, even the money part is changing fast. There are now a meaningful number of bloggers making a reasonable, even great, living by blogging, in some cases substantially more money than they would writing for a magazine or a book publisher.

I am one of those bloggers who not only make a living via my blog but who managed, with good business partners, to turn it into a media company.