Is Money A Motivator? Just Tell Me How Much
27. Nov, 2007 
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It has been noticed that when it comes to employees, salary is not a motivator. No matter how big it is, it’s a matter of months until the employee gets used to it, and treats it like a given, regardless the passion and commitment for the job. This is why employers who want to keep their team’s moral up, have to offer other kind of incentives, such as performance-related bonuses, trainings, or bonus trips.
What about blogging? I suppose most of you will tell me that readers are a motivator. That the comments you receive, the social bookmarks and votes, and all that stuff is keeping you on the track, is unleashing your best ideas, is giving you the strength to keep on blogging, in this ever busier age, when time seems like shrinking day after day.
What if there were no readers at all? What if I (or somebody else) would pay you to write posts after posts, the only condition to get paid being that nobody ever would read your articles. For how much would you do this?
Would $1000/month be enough to keep you motivated in the long run? I very much doubt.
What about $10,000 a month? If all you had to do for this kind of money would be to write great content which nobody else will ever read?
It is not about money? Then what other motivator would drive you to blog every day and hit delete before any foreign eyes would read your wisdom words?
If you will tell me that there’s nothing is this world to motivate you in this apparently non-sense enterprise, think twice: did you know that in the Tibetan Buddhist religion, when somebody dies, monks gather together and during several weeks, they make a sand mandala, so beautiful and so perfect that you cannot imagine? During all this time, they pray for the dead person, they quote from the Book Of Death, so the soul gets guidance in the beyond worlds. Then guess what? After they finish, they break the mandala, without any shroud of regret, without having the feeling they’ve worked in vain for such a long time. They don’t get any material reward for ther work.
Would you call this madness, or superiority?
Back to blogging: what would motivate you to destroy your blog before getting read by somebody else?
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Someone has told you about my blog haven’t they?
I don’t do it for the money, which is just as well really, I am motivated by wanting to be considered an expert rather than the rambling fool that I really am.
I guess I really just want to be listened to.
Hey Andrew, I have no idea what you are talking about. Your blog is very good, and I consider you an expert. I suppose most of your readers do. I didn’t write the article with a particular blog in mind, I was just wondering what would drive a blogger to hide his work from readers’ eyes.
Thanks Simonne. To answer your actual question, If I was forever prohibited from writing publicly, the amount of money would need to be enough to give me things to do other than writing. I would certainly still feel the desire to publish though. I expect I would tire of it after no more than a year.
The problem is that if I didn’t need to work, I would probably spend my time blogging instead.
I would need enough to change my life entirely. Millions perhaps.