The Truth About Blogging

One of the most common misconceptions about blogs is they are easy to write and the money from your work flows freely. Like most things, the facts are different than common beliefs. This post is an effort to shed light on the financial, critical degradation and time commitment facts of blogging.

The great majority of posts written from Nourishing Plot take eight hours of time, on average. As a stickler for research studies from reputable sources the posts are not just my thoughts or recollected memories where the author sits down, types and five minutes later it’s done. There is nothing wrong with posts like that and I have done a couple of them, it’s just not the foundation of this forum. Answering questions to posts and time spent commenting on pages is additional.

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For roughly a year and a half Nourishing Plot has posted an average of three to four posts per week giving a rough total time commitment of 35 hours a week. For the first six months the income through advertising and Amazon affiliate links did not exceed $20 a month. To date, after over 70 weeks of blogging, each consisting of roughly 35 hours of work, the site brings in approximately $300 a month with the average post receiving roughly 4,000 reads. That makes 2,450 hours of work  with a total income averaged during that time of $0.39 an hour, 35 hours a week for a year and a half.

Yet, legally, if I link a product, due to apparently vast earnings, I have to say thinks like this post contains affiliate links which pay for this site.

Please don’t misunderstand, I feel led by God to do this and I love it – clearly as I would never do it otherwise. The accolades I  have received from many readers have been the reason I stay. They tell me their health concerns, how they have gone broke with conventional doctors with little to no help then read one of my posts showing a study guiding them in a different direction and their life is altered. 

Be encouraged, if you like a post by any author, leaving an encouraging comment may make a huge difference for that author. If you are shopping on Amazon anyway, shopping from the links provided from that author, like this one, is what literally pays for the monthly cost of their site and their time invested. 

At the same time, some readers feel it is their job to chastise and crititcise, others are actually being paid to troll. In all honesty when I read a criticism my first initial thought is maybe they’re right, let me look at that. For your entertainment, here are some direct quotes I have received:

Holly Gaskill said, “This isn’t anything new, and while this reference is fairly accurate, it’s out of context in some areas. Pub med (sic) is a valid, highly measurable web site, this article spun their words for a ‘Chicken Little’ style of reporting, for a very certain type of consumer. I see how it worked.” Please note when I site sources like PubMed I take direct quotes allowing their studies to do the talking for me.

In another post Gaskill said, “This style of reporting is Alarmist (sic) and pulls in people not adjusted enough to think for themselves. Be an informed consumer and get a whole picture in layman’s terms and remember everything in your world is almost toxic and adverse. Consider the source, (sic) of the reporting. It’s a challenge for some to not think like Chicken Little did.”

Another said, “Just as a note that reflects on the level of accuracy and care that went into this article, 3 billion is 6.8% of 44 billion (sic). Please continue commenting on science only after you’ve figured out basic math.”

Someone else said, “Here are a few problems I noted before I stopped reading.(sic)”

There were no problems listed, just this, “Maybe make (sic) friends w/ a healthcare practitioner who would read your article for errors or overstatements might be a good idea.” Meanwhile, I am a health practitioner, a specialized one who works with chronic issues that do not see success from other healthcare practitioners. 

Someone else said, “Don’t make claims you can’t prove and know nothing about.”

Another said, “Having a special needs child isn’t a qualitative factor to do/conduct research.” 

Someone else commented on a post evaluating multiple water filter systems, “Sounds like an ad, follow the money.” Note the 39 cents per hour previously shown.

Another said, “Aluminium does not cause dementia, that was disproved years ago, you just lost a follower.” To read 895 articles at The National Institute Of Health showing the link between aluminum and dementia, click here. 

After sharing a link to information showing Artemisia Annua and sweet wormwood along with its propensity to decrease cancer prevalence a reader said, “Enough nonsense. Shame on you. Irresponsible!!!!!!!” 

Samantha Kirby told me, “Okay, I have to put my foot down here, you are twisting words you are seeing on the internet, there has NEVER been a PUBLISHED study linking canola oil to harm human health. Canola oil, if you did appropriate research, is from a Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed plant that was selectively bred from Rapeseed plants…. just like bananas were selectively bred down to look as they do today! As for your claim it is used as a pesticide, it IS classified as an insecticide, but can easily be replaced with vegetable oil or any other plant based oil when trying to protect plants from aphids or other pests because it works mainly but smothering them and is generally safe for your plants (unless it gets too hot out, then it’ll cook them with the heat!)… Remember that salt also kills snails, so you better stay 100% away from that because that’s clearly harmful too! Obviously other oils have more health benefits but you should really do some more fact based research besides reading headlines from .com sites.” To read a just one study on canola oil killing cattle with no known cause for their death, as in it was a silent killer leaving no trace, click here. To read over 52,000 reports, studies and articles on the dangers to human health from GMOs click here.

Someone commented, “I don’t understand why you’d use (this), I use (this) and (that).”

Several bloggers have found a pattern in people who make comments like this.

Food Babe author Vani Deva Hari is a blogger who is promotes eating mostly vegetables and exposes chemicals in the food industry. She is commonly known for her efforts in writing and petitioning Subway to remove a chemical dough conditioner, the same ingredient used to make yoga mats. Her recent book The Food Babe Way helped shed light on the current undertow on social media. Within the first few months Hari’s book received roughly 2,000 five star reviews on Amazon. What happened shortly thereafter was revealing.

A flood of negative reviews gushed in at the same time.

John Robbins told viewers in his Food Revolution Summit, “I see these attacks as the attempts of a desperate industry. An Industry that is trying to hold onto power and will do almost anything to silence its critics regardless to its cost to public health. I think we’re seeing an industry that’s reeling, scared stiff by the food movement.”

Robbins is most known as being the former heir to the multi-million dollar empire that is the Baskin-Robbins fortune. As a young man he left his family, turned his back on the ties in order to teach people of the dangers of processed foods and sugar. Click here to read more. He currently runs Food Revolution, an organization which spreads the world on the dangers of chemicals and processing in our food.

Robbins said, “There is an army of hired trolls out there, by the thousands, whose job it is to scour social media sites and popular blogs and to post messages that represent the corporate agenda while disguised as grass roots voices. Any time we have a popular Food Revolution Facebook post about food safety the trolls show up.”

He commented on Hari’s book saying, “There are almost 400 one star reviews and what’s truly remarkable about these one star reviews is that almost all of them appeared on Amazon.com magically on precisely the same day, April 7th (2015). They are mean spirited, they repeat the same accusations over and over again and they show no signs whatsoever of actually having read her book.”

He goes on to say, “We haven’t been able to trace exactly who is paying for this. Some say it could be the Koch brothers, others say Monsanto, others say it’s shadowy interest groups specifically set up to avoid detection. A few of them are scientists for hire like Henry I. Miller or Gilbert Ross. They write articles for magazines like The New Yorker, Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. They attack people.”

Robbins points out Koch Industries, one of the world’s largest privately held companies,  has gone against non-GMO advocates publicly. Open Secrets, an organization that reports campaign donations, shows Koch Industries has funded Congressman Mike Pompeo from Kansas handsomely with over $200,000 in tracked funds just for the 2013-14 year. Robbins says, “He’s been the single largest recipient from the Koch brothers in each of the last five years.”

The Koch brothers are industrialists worth over $100 billion and register as the 5th- and 6th-richest people in the world. 

Pompeo introduced a bill to Congress The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act which says any genetically modified or modified food is free from labeling showing the modification status. The bill was introduced in 2013-14. H.R.1599 – Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015 is currently a summary in progress. 

*If you learned something from this post share it so others can do the same. To support the efforts of this blog shop the affiliate links above like this one. You pay the same shopping through Amazon while the author receives a small referral fee from Amazon. This offsets the costs of this site.

*Nourishing Plot is written by Becky Plotner, ND, traditional naturopath, GAPS who sees clients in Rossville, Georgia. Since her son was delivered from the effects of autism (Asperger’s syndrome), ADHD, bipolar disorder/manic depression, hypoglycemia and dyslexia through food she continued her education specializing in Leaky Gut and parasitology through Duke University, finishing with distinction. This is not a news article published by a paper trying to make money. This blog is put out by a mom who sees first hand the effects of nourishing food vs food-ish items. No company pays her for writing these blogs, she considers this a form of missionary work. It is her desire to scream it from the rooftops so that others don’t suffer from the damaging effect of today’s “food”.

John Robbins spoke at an online conference  May 3, 2015.