Hypothesis :  Blogging is cheaper than gaming.

Experiment: Follow blogger through first three months and collect cost data.

Results:  Collected costs after the first three months are shown below.

$300 Webhosting and Domain Name registration for 3 years…..Subject chose to do three years because it would keep him committed to the blog and gave him a good price break.

$ 45 Two books on WordPress…..Almost a waste of money. The books offered very little that was not as clearly covered by documentation on the WordPress site.

$400 New Camera …..Subject’s  old camera is still good but seemed to feel that with a new camera a wider variety of pictures would appear on his computer. Logic is not supportable, believe advanced technolust was a factor.

$400 New Camera for wife…..Subject did not buy it for her but she wanted her own camera to help support his blogging. She’s a better photographer than he is so her logic might actually be valid.

$160 Two Picture Editing and Cataloging software packages…..Subject only bought one copy but his wife saw it in action and demanded her own copy.

$39 WordPress Theme

———

$1300 Total outlay so far. Slight possibility of income in future.

Compare that to a subscription based video game.

$60 Initial purchase price

$504 Subscription…..$15 per month for three years

———

$598 Total outlay. No possibility of income.

Subject wanted to factor in the cost of a new video card but researcher feels subject will buy it anyway.

Conclusion: Hypothesis disproved. The data gives abundant proof that over the next three years blogging will cost more than gaming. While there is still a possibility of income, without major changes to the site, $800 of blogging income over the next three years seems very unlikely.

Despite obvious cost differential, subject insists that he will continue writing blogs because the “satisfaction factor” is higher.  At this time researcher is uncertain how to quantitatively measure “satisfaction factor” .

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