One of the nicest things about blogging and podcasting is that it doesn’t have to be a full-time job. In fact you can hold down a full-time job and still “moonlight” as a blogger or podcaster. Thinking about that, does that mean that you have to disclose what your full-time job is? Can your employer hold you responsible for your opinions? Depending on who your employer is, and how open minded they are to employee opinions, this might cause some trouble. There have already been many people fired from their jobs, for what they write in their own, personal blogs.
This is something that has been talked about in many places, and most of them get the facts absolutely wrong. Those people that were fired were not “fired for blogging”. They were fired for what they “wrote” in their blog. It was the “content” that got them in trouble, not the act of blogging, itself. There’s a long editorial that I’d like to get into on this subject, but I’ll save that for later.
The fact is, is that “most” people that are trying to make money from blogging and podcasting are already holding down a full-time job. Should employees make their employer aware of where their blog is, so that they can be “kept in check” by them? I, personally, have told my employer all of the places that I normally write on the internet. I’ve written them down, or sent them in an email, so that I “can” be “checked on”. At this point, I can’t afford to lose my main source of income because of something that I’m not disclosing. Does this make a difference in the content that I write? Not at all. In the same paragraph, though, I will say that I have only disclosed the name of my employer “once”, online, and I really don’t “need” to make their name known. Am I being dishonest to people that read what I write? No. Leaving out that information doesn’t skew my writing style or the topics that I write about in any way.
In the future, I would love to turn turn blogging and podcasting into a full-time job, and give myself more time to focus on it. My current job, however, allows me plenty of time to do this “while I’m on the clock”. (“Yes, [boss] you’re paying me to blog “and” podcast, while I’m on the clock.). As long as my performance at my job is still at a high level, and it doesn’t interfere, there’s not a problem. This is what I have called, in the past, “the best way to be a paid blogger”. Is it really the best way? Probably not, but it works.
That’s really my main point. The nice thing about “moonlighting” as a paid blogger or podcaster is that it can be done at any time. I stay honest and don’t change timestamps to reflect that I’m “not” doing it on the clock. If anything ever comes back around to bite me in the ass, I’ll gladly repay my employer for the time that I had spent writing or podcasting. Since they are aware of it, and have been for quite a while, I don’t see that happening.