What exactly is the price we bloggers pay to work in our robes? Death!!!

They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece–not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing workforce of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.
Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion, and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

Now I can’t eat by blogging alone, so I would have loved to have seen the stats on also how many other roles bloggers play, especially non-A list bloggers (I think I’m a ñ list blogger). Not to mention the non-paying jobs like mothering two kids and domestic duties (and not the fun ones).

Speed can be of the essence. If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else’s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links, and the bigger share of the ad revenue.

“There’s no time ever–including when you’re sleeping–when you’re not worried about missing a story,” Arrington said.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we said no blogger or journalist could write a story between 8 p.m. Pacific time and dawn? Then we could all take a break,” he added. “But that’s never going to happen.”

We have a rule in my blog dominated household: no blogging after dinner. This causes me stress, yes, and I often break the rules when significant other isn’t watching.

But also note the the article focuses exclusively on male bloggers. What? Women don’t blog? We don’t have stress or health issues because of blogging?

Via / ZD Net

Shout out to my Co-Editor and stressed out blogger Jennifer.