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In New Grub Street, English novelist George Gissing depicted the literary life of 19th century London through two contrasting characters: Jasper Milvain, a cynical, ambitious writer of no particular literary talent, and Edwin Reardon, a sensitive artist with no commercial instincts.

A writer's life back then was straightforward, if not easy. Write, then write some more for numerous print outlets that existed then and you could eke out a living from the miniscule payments you received for each piece. It was a life Gissing knew well, caught as he was between the demands of the marketplace and his desire to write fiction.

Grub Street was the center of 18th century journalism in London but was gone by Gissing's day, and his novel thus characterized the frantic existence of the working writers of his time as the "new" Grub Street. The story ends in tragedy for Reardon. Buoyed by critical praise, he marries and fathers a child, but his wife leaves him when she cannot endure the poverty and social degradation that was the lot of a starving artist. Broken by depression, Reardon dies in misery.

On the whole, it doesn't sound so bad to me. After all, the Internet hadn't been invented yet.

At least in Gissing's day, if you wrote constantly you could get paid something for it. In the days since the development of blogging - approximately the middle of the first decade of this century to the present - you can write constantly and get nothing for it. Curiously, there aren't even any jobs shipped overseas to India to explain this transformative shift. One hundred years of writing has driven wages down from little to nothing. Bloggers live and starve on the New New Grub Street.

I wrote my first post on foxsports.com - a spoof about curling - in 2005. Until recently, the biggest paycheck for online writing I'd ever received was $50, for a post about Jonathan Winters I wrote for a comedy site. I should mention that the site is now defunct, a victim of its own improvidence. Every now and then I get a check from Google Ads in the low four figures, but that's counting the numbers to the right of the decimal point.

Still, like one of Gissing's characters, I write and I write and I write - so far, 2,146 posts in seven years, an average of 238 a year. Blogging has become for me a form of mental potato chips - you start, and you can't stop! But even a hopeless transfat addict has to consider the image in his mirror after a while; the Internet, you tell yourself, has you by the short hairs.

A few years ago I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and actually do something about this sad state of affairs. I'd repackage my deathless online prose, and some deathless online poetry as well, as e-books on one of the various digital text platforms that have developed.

It wasn't easy. While other middle-aged guys were out playing golf in official Ryder Cup sportswear, I sat in my den, hunched over my computer, dividing my posts up by the topics that have held my interest over the years: philosophy, ballet, NASCAR, sex, animals, vegetables, minerals, sex, alien abductions, and potpourri for $200, Alex. I packaged them into ebooks of 50 to 100 pages (or more), slapped a stock photo on the cover, and uploaded them to amazon.com.

"What are you doing?" my wife would ask from time to time.

"You're witness to a revolution in publishing," I'd say. "Like Gutenberg, dime novels, penny dreadfuls, paperbacks. I'm packaging my blog posts for sale!"

"I'm going to Starbucks," she'd reply. I get choked up just thinking about how she's been there for me, all the way, since the very beginning.

I have to admit, my story wasn't very convincing; since I hadn't made any money on the posts when I first wrote them, what made me think selling them in bundles would be any more rewarding? As the old business joke goes, what we lose on each sale we make up in volume.

But then came my day to crow. My day to say to all the naysayers "Go ahead and say 'nay,' but I'm actually making money writing on the Internet!" I got the check for my last fiscal quarter in the blogging-for-bucks business, and even I was stunned at the results.

What's important is not the top line, as business dweebs like to say, it's the trend, the growth in sales, that startles you. In three short months, my revenues increased 650 percent! That's not a typo.

Since I'm not a public company, you won't find the figures at the Securities and Exchange Commission, so here they are: April-seventy cents; May-$1.75; and June, $3.50, a whopping $4.55!

Like a lot of guys who hit it big, I could retire to Florida and pursue my dream of making the Senior Miniature Golf Tour, but I've decided it's time to give back. That's why for only $49.95 you can own "Your Guide to Internet Writing Riches" to enjoy in the comfort of your home.

Just play the tapes while you're tapping away at your computer, hit the "publish" button and watch your blogging income grow from nothing to . . . well, something more than nothing.

- Con Chapman

Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer whose works include The Year of the Gerbil, a history of the 1978 Yankees-Red Sox pennant race, 10 published plays and two novels, Making Partner and CannaCorn (Joshua Tree Publishing). His articles and humor have appeared in magazines and newspapers including The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe and The Christian Science Monitor.