Blogging For A Living

When I originally started thinking about writing as a new career path I had thought about maybe beginning by doing a little paid blogging. It seemed simple enough. I started by googling paid blogging jobs. As it turns out, the whole paid blogging thing gets a little complicated.
First of all, most sites pay you precious little. I tried a site called oDesk, in which you peruse a giant amount of blogging and article writing opportunities and apply for the ones you're interested in. The average amount they paid per post was $1.00. That's right, one freaking dollar. And they wouldn't want just one article. They'd want thirty articles in a week and were willing to pay you thirty dollars. Really?! So, in order to make any kind of living, one would have to write at least 500 articles a week. No thanks. Who has that much to say?
One site I'm currently trying out is called Suite101. At first it seemed interesting but they have a lot of weird rules. For one, they insist that all articles have at least one picture. Why? I can see where pictures can be helpful but why is it mandatory? Secondly, they insist that you have a picture of yourself as your profile picture (no cartoons, no drawings, no pictures of dogs or etc, just an actual picture of you). Again, why? I don't want pictures of myself on the internet. I don't even have any pictures of me on facebook. I haven't put one up yet and I don't think I'm going to. They have no right to demand that I put a personal picture of myself on the internet. (I don't see my employment there lasting long).
The whole internet writing thing is just so messed up and complicated. They insist that their writers have knowledge of keywording, SEO (search engine optimization), and all kinds of weird crap. It's not about writing at all, it's about tricking search engines into finding your articles so that there's a higher chance of people coming to your site and clicking ads. I don't care about ads. I care about writing quality pieces.
It's true what they say, there is no living in blogging.