Everybody likes the idea of earning a living without working a regular job. Being able to live comfortably and pay the bills without having to get up early in the mornings, commute to an office or toil away at a task someone else has deemed necessary. The dream of avoiding this less than idyllic life sadly remains just that - a dream - for most people, save for a few lucky types in the right industry.

However, in recent years there has been a shift to allow more people to achieve this goal of a work/life imbalance that is actually in their favour for a change. There has been a rise in what is known as “Pro-blogging” and real people are making real incomes from posting original content to blogs they’ve set up themselves.

But how? There are various ways and means but essentially, they sell referrals and advertising, organised through various affiliate schemes and adserving programs like Google Adsense. Operating on a pay-per-click basis, the basic gist of it is that when someone clicks an ad on the blogger’s site and then completes a purchase at the advertiser’s site, the blogger receives a fee.

It’s easy to see the appeal of such an arrangement and blogs are springing up left, right and centre at a rate of knots to try and grab a slice of the pie. For anyone interested in going down this route, there are a multitude of resources online purporting to be the fail-safe guide to achieving huge incomes (often in the six-figure range) for seemingly little time put in. But having explored the field myself, I couldn’t help but feel like the majority of these sites are in fact profiting from those seeking advice - using the exact techniques they describe in their tutorials to earn revenue themselves. There is nothing wrong with this, of course they are more than entitled to do so - however in many cases this seems to affect the quality of the site content itself.

However, while idly using the power of StumbleUpon earlier this week, I came across a site that seems much more open about when their links actually lead the author to profit and instead focus on compelling content that doesn’t seek to blind you with huge figures and unlikely stories of practically instant success. The site in question is Upstart Blogger which has been a long established resource from what I can tell in various comments elsewhere on the web. UB has recently changed hands and is now maintained by a Jazz Trumpeter by the name of Ashley Morgan. He appears to be approaching the site with a strong enthusiasm, which is refreshing considering how many blogs go by the wayside when their authors lose interest (he says, hoping no one notices this is the first post to this blog since the start of February…).

As far as DaveStevens.co.uk goes, pro-blogging is not a route I intend to take as I don’t feel that widescale advertising or an overabundance of referral links would suit a site that is ultimately a reflection of me. However, as a source of extra income or - who knows - an alternative to a regular 9 to 5, it’s an area worth thinking about for other spaces I own.