$45,000 – $75,000 per year blogging? – UPDATED

Whoa, I should look into this blogging gig, it sounds lucrative, doesn’t it?

I don’t know where the WSJ is getting its numbers from, or which bloggers it’s talking to, but I clearly ain’t one of them.

The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That’s almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click — whether on their site or someone else’s.
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Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours — 50 to 60 hours a week.

$45,000 – $90,000 a year?

Most of the time I don’t make $900.00 in a month!

I blog for the love of it – because I love to write – but now I’m wondering if I’m just doing it wrong! If there is big money to be made in blogging, it has managed to sneak past me.

Little Miss Attila says pretty much the same and so do Stacy McCain and James Joyner.

I don’t doubt there are a few – a very few – bloggers who have managed to find their living on the blogs, but I have a fairly respectable blog on which I easily invest 50 hours a week or more, and if I told you what I made last year, you’d wonder why I don’t just take an entry-level government job for $22,000 a year, both for the increase in salary and the benefits. Frankly, the only reason I can afford to be a freelance writer is because my husband is the breadwinner and we don’t live large.

$45,000 a year would be incredible. $75,000? I’d be over the moon! I’d buy my husband a car that wasn’t 14 years old!

UPDATE: Ed and Allahpundit are calling this WSJ article straight-up stupid.