Getting paid to blog

Over the holidays I spent two weeks interning at ITWeb in Johannesburg. On the first day I arrived I sat down at my desk, logged on to my computer and clicked straight away to Facebook. To my shock and horror ITWeb, like most other companies, had the site blocked. The whole office heard me wail out loud. So, just as I thought I would have to go cold turkey for two weeks, a kind ITWeb journo offered me an alternative. She introduced me to the site My Digital Life which she and all the other journos thought was the new crack.

My Digital Life is a social networking site that pays you to blog. My Digital Life works like any other social networking site, you sign up, create a profile and add friends to your list of contacts. Then all you have to do is start blogging away. Once you’ve posted a certain number of blog posts you attain author status. The My Digital Life community decides whether or not you worthy of earning some cash. Each time someone clicks on your blog you earn 10c and the cash becomes redeemable in blocks of R50. This is great news for struggling students to earn a bit of drinking money.

My Digital Life is not a bad idea for up and coming journalists. For those of us stuck in small towns like Grahamstown we have less access to getting our stories published than those who are in the cities. My Digital Life at least allows us to get our stuff out there. And because it’s a social network a like minded community can judge whether you write like, and excuse my language, shit or not. So instead of just putting up your thoughts, stories or whatever on a random blog that might never see any traffic (like this one) publishing on My Digital Life allows for feedback. And at least you know you’re bound to get some traffic as Amatomu lists (as of the 25 July 2007) My Digital Life as the 15th most popular blog site in South Africa.