Friday, November 18, 2005

Coolest Job in the World

I had know of you could become a full-time or pro blogger, but I dunno that you could actually be employed (job employment ads in JobStreet) as a blogger (an occupation with salary, a job). No shit man.

What is the coolest job in this world? When I was in college, I start reading about World Cyber Games, where you could be a Cyber Athletes (someone like the Athletes in Olympic, except that you just sit there and play games). I was thinking, "This is so cool! We can actually play game and make a living out of it." The first famous Cyber Athletes I know of is former Quake World Champion, Dennis "Thresh" Fong. At that time, he (age 22) was earning about 100K USD per year, won a Ferrari owned by John Carmack (this guy is the founder of id Software, the creator of Quake and DOOM, and is building a rocket into space at the moment) and had sponsorship for various gaming product (including Mouse from Microsoft). This is so cool, and you could get rich by just playing games (to hell with all the books and education, I should be allowed to play games 24 hours a day since 6 years old, muahahaha). I read about this elite group of Korean Starcraft players who actually rent a house and went through one month of intensive training together before to tournament, doing nothing but eat, play games, sleep, play games, and play more games.

Though it may sounds so cool and fun (all games and no work/study, yeah!), but it could get equally stressful when it is done professionally. It is no longer for fun, it is for money now. You need to have more dedication and discipline, training a finite number of hours daily as if it is your job (your bread and butter). Loosing doesn't means just disappointment, but no money for lunch as well. But I still like to be a Cyber Athletes, as playing games (even done professionally with more stress and less fun) still beats sitting in the office doing some boring job and taking orders from some stupid people anytime. But I can't, because I am neither elite nor crazy, I am just a novice gamer who enjoys gaming at my own pace. Perhaps I have no talent as well, but I just like the game.

Now, back to blogging. Though it does not sound as cool as gaming, but it is pretty fun and enjoyable as well. Blogging is almost like being a writer, maybe journalist. For professional blogger, you get to blog about what you actually like, or you end up writing just for the mere pleasure and interest of others. How does blogger make money? Create a blog with a specific topic, which might interest a large crowd, draw tons of traffic to your blog and make money through online advertising like Google Adsense, Yahoo Overture or Chitika. There are tons of posting out there which teach you how to make money by blogging, but whether it works for you or whether you would like to embark on this path is totally another matter. Maybe Kenny Sia is a professional blogger, as he got him fame (top 100 blogger in Technocrati. Ops! He is no longer there!) and getting 6000 hit daily with God Knows how much AdSence dollar. XiaXue (a Singaporean blogger) seems to be doing well and ranked 39 in Technocrati top 100 as of today (seems like a long way to fall off the chart). Like all the fun things in this world, turning pro take the fun out of it and put more pressure in it, but it sure beats some lousy job anytime. I shall stick with being a novice blogger at the moment, as it is still fun. The truth is (who don't wants money), I am not famous and not "professional" enough, but I am happy, thus my blog shall give me happiness and satisfaction rather than cash at this moment.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i dun think kenny has adsense on his site? haha but pro-gamers are kinda cool. like tat lil poison kid wif some mad halo skills. and he's wat.. 7? haha. cheers!

Unknown said...

ahh, we're too old to be the top gun. Perhaps if we're born 5-10 years later, we could spent our entire childhood playing game and making money at the same time.

Anyway, only the very best of Cyber Atheletes are able to make big bucks.