You can do what you want to if you are only looking to entertain yourself and maybe a few others.

If you are looking to make any noticeable money, you need to figure out what you people will pay you for, first. The market for “my friends think I am interesting and I regurgitate other posts seen on the net (intentionally or not)” isn’t going to be that great.

The problem is that if you’re wanting to make money you usually have to pay attention to what other people want more than you have to do your own thing. Otherwise you end up in the “starving artist” category.

It seems that too many people get bogged down in the details when it comes to publishing content online. Robert has it right when he says that we should do what we want to do, rather than what others tell us. Only this way will our content be fresh and appealing to the ever-changing sea of people on the interweb

I do agree with her that it can work to “throw out the rulebook” if you’re bogged down. But, then again, writing a post a month or so and expecting to construct a successful “make money online” social blog from that isn’t being creative, it’s just unproductive laziness (there can be productive laziness, though).

On the last one, it’s easy to get caught up in Analysis Paralysis sometimes. Often it’s better to do something somewhat wrong than wait and wait for everything to be ‘perfect’.

I think it really depends on what your objectives are with a blog. If your objective is to make money with a blog, there are ways to do that. If you want to write for the joy of creative writing, you can do that. It’s kind of like writing for People Magazine or writing a novel, two very different approaches to writing but both can be rewarding in their own ways. However, mixing them usually doesn’t work.

I think one of the toughest things about making money online is that things change quickly. What makes you a tidy sum this month/year may stop working for some reason next week. An algorithm change, fee increase or so forth can put your hard work and earnings at risk. Sucks, but that’s the way things are.

I saw your AI article. It’s going to be interesting to see how badly last season’s shark jumping will hurt this year’s season.