Making a living because of something you love /enjoy doing is something I want to aspire to, and I would say most Wow bloggers enjoy/love playing Wow because they write about it, but they do it for free.
I’ve mulled over legitimizing my writing a little more by attaching my real name. Making money from my blog is not what I intend, but I call myself a writer. I’ve been paid and published, but I haven’t quite worked out if I want this blog to sit on my Writing bibliography. 625 posts, and about 2.5 years of writing. I’m a little proud. Actually I’m very proud. It’s my greatest body of work – I feel like I would be omitting something from my writing history if I didn’t ‘claim’ it.
I also think about some of the great talent we see that uses WOW as the axis idea, and motivation. Blogs, RP, Comics, Mechanima, music, craft, podcasting, add on developers. We use wow to practise, and apply a craft, or talent. Most people don’t get paid. All of these rely on donations, or ad revenue if they choose ( which surely can’t be a lot) and people’s free time to produce. The only thing I can think of that people get paid for, would be for submitting /writing for a tech mag with a budget to pay, or places like wow.com, or MMO champion. I know a couple of bloggers that have paypal donation buttons, one, Tobold uses it to buy things that he writes about, others to cover things like hosting costs, domain registrations, and so on. A contributing reason for me not wanting to earn money from this blog is it has a very low upkeep cost. Just the yearly name registration and mapping fee. I’m happy not to host it for now, and I didn’t even need to have my own domain, but I wanted to.
I don’t want a paypal donation button, and I can’t see it being worth the compromise from the little money I would earn to put my own ads on here. Though I really should pay to remove WordPress ads. ( but that becomes another expense.)
I need to work on polishing my writing a lot more, and some better more generic topics, maybe try to find more than WOW to write about, and I think I am doing that a lot more lately. Or tying Wow back to bigger issues. 625 posts though is a lot of practise. I think I’m getting better. The idea being is that I would like to write worthy enough stuff to get paid for it.
It’s annoys me feed stealers can plonk my entire post on their website, surround it with ads, and make money off what I don’t, but that’s another issue all together.
It’s also little sad creatively, that even though the words in this blog are all mine, my ideas are all mine they would not exist but for the creative talent, and copyrighted ideas of other people. I stopped writing fan fic when I was into Voyager. I have the potential to create my own original ideas, and get full credit for it, I don’t need someone elses characters to work with.
I also only have my audience because of someone elses talent, and copyright ownership. I can’t even claim original illustration – I only have this ‘freedom’ under a creative commons, As for my audience. Wow has made what I write about interesting enough to read by more people than I could have ever dreamed. I don’t think my real life is exciting enough for people to want to read about it.
It’s all well and good to have a passion, and I know people have hobbies that don’t make them money. My weirdest hobby was waving a wooden stick (Bokken) around a local park for 12 months doing sword lessons. Fun, but yes people thought I was odd – I spent a bit of money. Lessons, grading, and two bokkens that are on display in my lounge room to scare my dates, but I stopped my singing lessons because I couldn’t justify the expense for that that hobby when I had a mortgage.
I worked out that while I love playing WOW my passion is actually Writing, and I use writing about wow as a substitution for writing about other things, but I don’t think that without being able to stretch my writers wings by blogging about Wow, I would have ever tried to write more than fiction. I am very much aware how closely tied my gaming is with my blogging about Wow. If either were to stop, the other would, unless I could find a topic I was interested in enough to come up with new things to talk about.
I have a passion for writing – probably should knuckle down and learn to be a better one. We used to call self publishing authors as vanity publishers. You weren’t good enough for a real publisher to take you so you did it yourself. Blogging is a form of vanity publishing. guaranteed a space on the internet. I’ve made some money from writing. Not lately though, but yes I want to earn money from my passion for writing.
Just need to write more stuff that does not bounce off someone elses ideas.
Provided by 
Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
Don’t let your identity out into the internet.
http://mmofallout.com/2010/08/11/i-cant-do-this-alone-im-sick-of-the-mmo-stigma/
This is a salutary lesson for anyone who blogs about games.
And without an Aussie voice, I’ll have to start reading Gnomeageddon again.
Which will just make me mad at Bledisloe time.
I like writing about other things as a structured creative outlet. Almost like a performance art, in that you’re taking ideas that someone else created and adding your own expression and interpretation to them.
-blink- Okay yeah that sounded pretty pretentious…
The one thing I like about WoW blogs is that (most of them) are not-for-profit. Outside of our little world, there’s a big focus on blogging-for-$$$ – either ‘make money for your blog’ or ‘blog your way into a network for your career’. Being not for profit does allow us freedom: we don’t have to be (as) professional, we can make drama, and we can be critical. Most of the blogs I love would feel quite different if they had sponsors and career attached to them.
WoW blogging as done a lot for my writing, too. I enjoy writing and I write regularly again, and I know that wouldn’t have happened without my WoW blogging identity.
I feel the same way, though, that sometimes I want something that is entirely mine.
Actually I can’t recommend the Paypal donation button. After an initial rush, people just forgot about it. I haven’t received a single donation for months now. If you wanted donations to work, you’d have to make a post once per month begging for money.
I say good luck on your writing career. It’s always better to earn your living from something you are passionate about. I know what you mean about wanting to find or create an IP of your own that you can sell to a publisher, or publish yourself. I have a friend that has led an amazing life and can tell wonderful stories about it. He just got a book published about his childhood. I hope it does well, and I envy his status as a published professional.