The Syntagma Story continued.

The word you most hear in connection with blogging is “passion”. Write about what you’re passionate about, is the general counsel given to new bloggers. Is that good advice? It’s now so engrained in the folklore of professional blogging as to be almost unchallengable.

I’m going to be counter-intuitive about this because, as a network owner of nearly two years standing, I’ve learnt a thing or two about passion. I’ve also found that situations aren’t always what they seem.

If you’re passionate about something, say, cats or Minoan amphora, you really have to be more than just knowledgeable about them. You must also be a very good writer — someone who can express the full depth and breadth of your ideas and well-stocked mind and carry them intact into other people’s consciousness.

Alas, very few are. Most are people who fizz for a while, then burn out when their efforts come to nothing. I call them Catherine Wheels.

At the commercial network level, bloggers who apply for jobs do want to make money. Why else would they apply? On the other hand, they also want to write about what interests them, and are often encouraged to do that.

How many times have I heard, “I want to write about Etruscan architecture” or some such niche. “Do you want to make money?”, say I, in my usual mercenary way. “Well, I don’t want to sell my soul, if that’s what you mean”, they reply. “But,” say I, “do you want to make money?”

Of course, they do, but they don’t want to admit it as baldly as that.

Almost all newbie bloggers are schizoid by nature. They really, really, really want to earn money, but they also want to preserve “the integrity of their art”. I usually remind them that William Shakespeare was constantly being chased for debt and even defaulted on his tax payments.

Of course, you can use a blog as a stage to perform on — if you are your own product. Selling yourself is a good way to use weblog software. But most blog writers want to earn cash from the act of writing the blog itself, and that requires focus, not passion or self-indulgent choices of subject matter.

Take books as an example. Books are one of my own passions. I’ve tried writing about them online and selling them on affiliate terms with Amazon and others. It just doesn’t work. Local stores will undercut you on the bestsellers — supermarkets now offer huge discounts — and long tail stuff is too thin a gruel to live on.

Just reading a book to review takes a minimum of three hours. How many can you do in a working day? Not more than one realistically. So passion is not enough.

Unfocused bloggers need to ask themselves three questions :

1. Do I want to spend a lot of time writing about my fave subject irrespective of whether it makes money or not?

If the answer is Yes, then they don’t belong in the commercial sector.

2. Can I become a thought leader in a monetizable and lucrative niche?

Assuming the answer is No, go to question 3 — because a network can’t gamble on someone turning into an Om Malik or Michael Arrington :

3. How can I make money from the work I intend to put into writing online?

Now we’re getting somewhere.

This is the point at which a rookie become marketable and usable for a commercial network.

Although we’ve had many site failures at Syntagma Media — and author failures too — we have turned round a lot of failing sites — and authors — by changing the emphasis, usually in the direction of big-ticket products and services, or high-end reportage and commentary.

Like everything else, it’s about professionalism and focus. The passionate, unfocused blogger is not a useful factor in a successful operation. Mainstream media use authoritative and reassuring voices in their presentation. That’s not accidental.

Passion would be so out of place.