I was watching Craig Ferguson on Friday (who by the way does a hilarious imitation of Barbara Walters), and he was interviewing Rosie O’Donnell.

For those who don’t know, Rosie has had a blog (Rosie.com) since 2003 – long before many had even heard of blogs. It’s been the source of information on many of her life’s adventures – her magazine, her sexuality, her ‘The View’ trials, and so forth.

In the interview she mentions moving away from the personal blogging to more professional aspects – blogging about events and causes that matter to her, and less about her personal life.

The reason? She says that while it was new and fun in the beginning, there’s too many out there doing the same now. As well, her personal observations end up on news programs:

Starts about 6:15 into the interview…

Is that the case with YOUR blog?

It’s not a coincidence someone in touch with blogging is doing this – for years I’ve recommended people NOT go on about their life through their blog, for the simple reason that it can come back to haunt them.

Now here’s another reason: it just isn’t money-making.

After all, you can see tragedy every day by turning on the TV, or looking at YouTube: why will you pay for it on a blog? Articles like that are notoriously difficult to turn into moneymakers. Some sites can take daily anecdotes and make them profitable (for example, the Waiter Rant has parleyed his stories into two books), but that’s rare, and due in no small part to their already more-than-competent writing (and entertaining) skills – for most others, it’s a long, painful, uphill battle that may not succeed.

Additionally, articles like that are hard to ‘lock in’ for advertisers. Place Adsense on a site like that, and see what ads are displayed (answer: poor ones). More importantly, see what the Ad conversions are. It’s no secret that a a targeted blog on a narrowly focused topic does much better (and even more so when the topic is a high-priced keyword, like ‘money’ or ‘business’).

Blogging should have a purpose. Rosie is now looking to promote her projects. You can try to promote anything you want with yours; but the much easier path is to avoid wearing your heart on your sleeve, and provide solid information people need and would pay good money for – because if you get enough interest, they might just pay for it in another format – and then you’ll have made your blog count.