Why I Started Blogging…From Motivation to Game Plan

It has been exactly one year now since I wrote my first post. Funny story: Vinay Menon was the first person ever to comment on one of my posts. I became friends and have kept in touch with him and his business partner, Anthony, over the past year through our mutual interest in exotic sport cars. In November of 2007, I was fortunate to meet Vinay and Anthony at the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. How many people can say that they actually met the first person to ever comment on their blogs? I can.

Let’s recap a little bit: I came across the entire concept of blogging back in November of 2006. Wow, that feels like SUCH a long time ago! It was after I had first moved down from Seattle to Phoenix, Arizona, and I was becoming more and more dedicated to producing a sustainable income from the Internet.

I was also a “MySpacer” at the time and enjoyed socializing with my real-life friends online. That was all about to change.

My Motivation

It soon was apparent that there were no real professional and and business benefits from MySpace. I deleted my account, and later that month started doing Internet research on Mark Zuckerberg (creator of Facebook). I was fascinated with how someone his age (he was 22 at the time, just like me) created such an incredible Internet empire from his dorm room.

Researching Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg led me to a Valleywag article about Mark and Kevin Rose (creator of Digg). To make a long story short, I ended up on Digg, and eventually stumbled upon John Chow’s blog, who, at the time, was gaming his way to the front page of Digg for days at a time.

John’s blog was the first “blog” I had ever read. What I liked about the blog was that this was a personal account of making money online. This was exactly the type of information I was looking for. Not only that, but John had (and still has) a fun and easy-to-read writing style. He had written quite a few articles by that time. I remember reading his blog voraciously, with each post becoming more knowledgeable about the various aspects of advertising, domaining, SEO, affiliate marketing, and e-commerce.

John wrote some fantastically useful posts in his first six months of blogging, many of which contain the fundamental knowledge of a lot of the various ways to make money online. If you ever get the chance, I recommend going back and reading some of the October-November-December 2006 posts on John’s blog.

Seeing John’s success made me even more motivated, although not to make money off my blog – I was most interested in using my blog as a journal to document my learning and hopefully teach other people about different aspects of Internet specialization such as SEO, domaining, web design, and branding.

Establishing an online identity in order to run a business was certainly one of the major goals of blogging. Why? People are much more likely to do business with you if they have a sense of who you are and whether you are trustworthy. Obviously, it was much harder to do business and get an audience when I was a new blogger. Now, a year later, I feel as if I have a true community of like-minded professionals.

The Six-Month Game Plan

When I think back to what helped me the most, it was having a six-month game plan for establishing my online identity. Six months is a long time in the Internet world, and a lot can change in that time span. At the same time, six months is short enough of a time that if clearly planned out, significant goals and life transformations can be launched.

When I first started blogging, one of my sub-goals was to generate more business for my web design company, infinFX. My plan was that after six months of blogging, I would be running a 100%, self-sustaining, Internet-based web design firm. Little did I know that infinFX would have to morph into Unique Blog Designs for this to come true. Either way, sticking with my blog for six months made it much easier to accomplish that next goal.

How long have you been blogging? Why did you start blogging? Do you have a six-month game plan for your blog? How has blogging helped your business? I look forward to hearing!