“I hoped that people who loved the blog would spill over to people who read Dilbert, and make my flagship product stronger.  Instead, I found that if I wrote nine highly popular posts, and one that a reader disagreed with, the reaction was inevitably “I can never read Dilbert again because of what you wrote in that one post.”  Every blog post reduced my income, even if 90% of the readers loved it.  And a startling number of readers couldn’t tell when I was serious or kidding, so most of the negative reactions were based on misperceptions.”

“That’s why I will continue blogging, albeit less controversially.  I’ll just do it less often, especially over the holidays.  It’s hard to tell the family I can’t spend time with them because I need to create free content on the Internet that will lower our income.”