A lawyer made redundant during the economic downturn has had her benefits suspended – because she earns cents a day from her personal food blog.
The graduate started STL Meal Deals, where she posts local restaurant offers and recommendations, after being laid off from her position at a law firm in New York earlier this year.
Like many amateur bloggers hoping to generate a little pocket monry she signed up with Google AdSense, which placed relevant adverts against her postings.
She received a small fee – a matter of cents – every time a visitor to her site clicked on an advert. In the six months since launching she had raised just $238.75, barely more than a dollar a day.
The lawyer, who did not want to be named, told Forbes magazine that she declared the earnings to the New York State Department of Labor, which initially told her that they would not affect her $405-a-week benefits.
But the woman has now had her unemployment payouts suspended while the department investigates whether the Google AdSense money should be classified as "residual" – which can be discounted – or the fruits of self-employment, which would lead to a deduction in her weekly cheques.
The department told the magazine that the issue of small-scale advertising income from blogs and websites was still "uncharted territory", although it is likely to become a more common problem as growing numbers of people seek to make money from producing online content.
In the meantime, the woman has removed the AdSense adverts from the blog, saying she is frustrated at being "treated with suspicion and punished".
