From about 2009 to late 2012, I published a blog, jokingly titled Make Money Panhandling, that became the #1 blog in the world on the subjects of panhandling and homelessness. In its life the blog got about 65,000 page views, and the highlight was being contacted by John Stossel's TV producer to aid in their research for one hour John Stossel show called "Freeloaders." John Stossel himself dressed down as a homeless person and panhandled for the show. According to his research, GE (aka General Electric) was the biggest "freeloader" in the U.S..
I began blogging seriously in late 2008, after begin forced out of Southern California, and moving in with my parents in the small town of Kernersville, California. I was unable to get any job in Kernersville at that time when the economy was collapsing, or at any time in the ten years I was trapped in North Carolina. The job market is that bad there, compounded by the tradition of Southern cronyism. I was massively depressed, but for the first time in my life I had unfettered access to a computer with an internet connection. I started "surfing the web" nightly, as we said back then. Within a couple of weeks, I started blogging about my days riding and working in the BMX freestyle industry in the 1980's. Much to my surprise, I soon gained a small following, and began to reconnect online to old friends from that world. My blog soon became the #1 Old School BMX freestyle blog in the world, mostly by default.
After about a year of blogging, just for something to do, while living in a place where there was nothing for me to do, I got an email from a friend. "You know," they said, "Some people actually make a living blogging." I honestly didn't know. I had been a Luddite all through the 2000's, a time when I was mostly working as a taxi driver in Orange County, California. My aversion to technology is part of why I became homeless in Orange County. As a taxi driver, working 80+ hours every week, I still couldn't afford to rent a regular apartment. So I lived in my taxi for about 4 1/2 years. I took showers at a gym, and rented a "cheap" motel room one night a week, to catch up on sleep, and take a night off. I worked 7 days a week, like that, as the taxi industry quickly went downhill.
It wasn't Uber and Lyft that put me out of business, it was the technological shift from CB radio-based dispatching to computer-based dispatching. Much like the millions of factory workers laid off in the 1980's and 1990's due to new technology and outsourcing, I lost my living because I didn't pay attention to th emarch of new technology. I became fully homeless in late 2007, lived on the streets for a year, and was forced to move to North Carolina, where my family wound up living at the time.
While I was busy blogging in the evenings, mostly as a creative outlet, I didn't pay much attention to the blogging subculture of the day. Once tipped off that some bloggers made a living at it, I realized that I needed to learn how to be a professional writer in today's hyper-connected, tech heavy world. Everything had changed since I was a BMX magazine writer 23 years earlier. I began the long process of trying to weed through the B.S. of the "make money online" ideas, and see if there was a viable way to make a living without being a scammer or spammer. That process ultimately led to using my blogs to help sell the unique Sharpie artwork I create, while working to add other new media income sources to the mix. That process continues today.
Early on, in 2009, I learned of the concept of search engine optimization, or SEO, which is basically the techniques used to get your website, whatever kind of website it is, up to the top of the Google (and other) search results. To learn that process, I needed a website to practice on. I wanted to use a challenging title, something with the words "make money" in the title, because that was a hard niche to excel in. I thought one night, "What it the absolute stupidest blog title I can think of with "make money" in it? Having been homeless on and off for 5+ years at that point, the name "Make Money Panhandling" popped in my head. So I started a blog with that title, just as a way to practice SEO techniques. Within two weeks, my blog was near the top of Google search results. More importantly, I realized that I had a lot of thoughts and ideas about homelessness and panhandling that I wanted to get out into the world. I kept writing blog posts, I kept posting photos of funny panhandling signs, and the blog gained a decent readership. Some readers were homeless people. But most turned out to be people working with the homeless in some way, and the occasional media person doing research, like John Stossel's producer.
In late 2012, shortly after my dad's death, I got really depressed. It wasn't so much from him dying, he had diabetes for years, and eventually had a bad stroke, and died a few months later. We knew he wouldn't be with us much longer. But my own inability to find any job, literally I couldn't get hied for anything, except taxi driving, in North Carolina, that weighed on me heavily. During that period of severe depression, I deleted all my blogs, BMX, panhandling, and other ideas I had tried, from the internet. "Make Money Panhandling," by that time, had been solidly locked in the top spot in Google and Bing search results for 2 1/2 years, and was the leading blog on homelessness in the world during its whole lifetime.
Lat night, I went to a meeting about the homeless problem in Newport Beach, California, where I'm living (for a short time, most likely). In the years I was back East, in North Carolina, the number of homeless people in Southern California, and across the country, has exploded. Sitting and listening at the meeting, and knowing what I know, both firsthand, and from researching and writing about homelessness years ago, I realized that ignorance of today's world of homelessness, and lack of understanding, is still one of the main issues in homelessness. So I'm back, with another sarcastically titled blog, to shed some light, and share information, on this issue. Sorry powers at be, you haven't killed me yet. Heh, heh, heh.
-Steve Emig, January 9th, 2020
You can check out my personal blog at:
Steve Emig: The White Bear
And my blog about starting and promoting a creative-based small business in today's world, at:
WPOS Kreative Ideas
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