May 21, 2008 10:43 AM

The career paths of bloggers
Posted by Jesse Nunesat 10:43 AM

There are many blogs out there on the Internet. Even on Boston.com, there are a whole slew of blogs and bloggers (present company included.)

But for those most successful bloggers out there, the ones who are known around the country and who make their living off of their little slice of the Web, how did they start out? What jobs preceded their blogging days?

Well, mainstreet.com asked a few well-known bloggers what they did for a paycheck before they got the blogging bug. Here is a sampling:

Blog: Celebrity Babies
Blogger: Danielle Freidland
First Job: Freidland was a floater at an executive search firm. In addition to tech support, Friedland had to frequently arrive early to man the receptionist desk. Forced to wear skirts everyday, the company's finally agreed to allow the women to wear pants, but the threat of losing the right to wear pants always loomed over her. They put me "out of my misery", says Friedland, who was let go in 1999, along with the manager she was fond of.

Blog: Deadspin
Blogger: Will Leitch
First Job: "My first job was working for U. The National College Magazine, as the film editor. I mostly drove all around Los Angeles, watching awful movies and desperately trying not to get a tan. I succeeded."

Blog: Huffington Post
Blogger: Rachel Sklar
First Job: "Okay, so: First job out of college? Well, every summer I went to summer camp. I did some student-council related work during the summers also. But I went straight from college (in Canada we call it "undergrad") to law school, where during my first summer I went back to camp. My part-time job during law school was working on a book I had been hired to write ("A Stroke of Luck" with stroke survivor Howard Rocket), and my first "real" job was as a summer associate at a Manhattan law firm after my second year (though if you don't think putting 90 ten-year-olds on stage to rehearse "The Lonely Goatherd" during a July heat wave is work, then you've never been a camp theater director). After law school, my first job was lawyer. So technically, my first job out of school was "lawyer." I did the broke/unemployed thing a few years later, when I left to go freelance full-time; eBay helped."

It's always interesting to see the winding career paths that some people take. Many times, what they do now is completely unrelated to what they thought they'd do 10, 20 years ago.

How many twists and turns has your career path taken? Are you doing something completely different than you thought you'd be doing? Share your thoughts on our message board.