Why are YOU blogging? Everyone has his or her reason. Unfortunately, it seems many people these days are blogging for the sole reason of easy money with little effort.
The success of personal blogs like those of John Chow and Darren Rowse has led many to believe they can trade a few hours a day for a few thousand dollars a month. In fact, the Vancouver Sun recently published a full page article on John Chow with the headline “Internet bucks – no effort,” implying there is no effort involved in blogging. Anyone who has ever visited John’s site automatically knows he puts in TONS of effort.
These kinds of public misconceptions about blogging are hurting the quality of the blogosphere. People should not be blogging for the sole purpose of earning money, because this lowers the quality of newer blogs and also unfairly raises people’s expectations about how easy it is to create a successful blog.
Not only that, but I think many new bloggers are forgetting the true purpose of blogging. As a result, many new bloggers are coming across as blood-thirtsty leeches looking to exploit “the sphere.” That fact is, it isn’t hard to write a few articles and throw up some Adsense. I am sure we could teach monkeys to do that. But what does it take to create a successful blog?
I am not going to pretend like I run a successful blog, because I have only been blogging for a month now. However, I can tell you that blogging success starts with an attitude other than greed. I have been a regular reader of over 20 high quality blogs for 6 months now, so I understand the difference between bloggers who do it for the money and those who do it for the benefit of others.
Take John Chow’s blog, he has written dozens of inspiring how-to articles on everything from personal finance to blogging. His articles benefit the greater good of the blogosphere and as a result, he has attracted thousands of loyal readers. I am sure he never started blogging just to make a few extra bucks.
For me, blogging is about participating in a community of like-minded individuals. I know that the business connections I will make from blogging are worth far more than any extra Adsense change. In fact, I have already had previous clients (that I’ve built web sites for in the past) stumble across my blog, admire what I am doing, and inquire that I do more work or build a blog for them.
A blog is truly a chance to “show the world” what you are doing. Whether you tame wild hyenas or run a small web design business like me, blogging is your opportunity to connect with similar people and build a community. If more people started blogging for the community instead of the money, they would see much greater success, and we would see higher quality blogs. Either way, those concerned only with short-term gain soon enough drop out of the blogging once they discover it does take effort.
Before I started blogging, I felt frustrated by not knowing any like-minded people. And by like-minded people, I mean young, ambitious, and creative entrepreneurs. I didn’t know where to meet these people. As I mentioned earlier, I have been blogging for only a month, but I have already met and chat regularly with some very interesting young entrepreneurs from all around the world. I would have never had the chance to connect with these people if I had never started my blog.
So, why are you blogging? Are you just money-hungry or are you looking to participate in a global community? Hopefully, new bloggers will understand in order to attract a large, loyal reader base, they must create original content, particpate in their surrounding community, and never give up. Survival of the fittest will eventually filter out all the low-quality, money-hungry faux-bloggers anyway.
Why do I blog? I get pleasure out of it. I make friends from it. I even met… (Shock horror!) NATE!
😉
Nate you wrote:
“And by like-minded people, I mean young, ambitious, and creative entrepreneurs. I didn’t know where to meet these people.”
To offer you some insight from my point of view, and although by the sounds of it you have figured this out yourself….. If you build a blog, a site, or a web community, and put your true passion into your writing, posting and content, it is bound to attract other ‘like-minded people’, or people who find your work fascinating. Just the fact that I enjoy visiting your site daily to see what you have to say is a perfect example, because my business partner VinayM (who discovered your site) and I actively seeks other individuals around the world such as yourself and other young entrepreneurs to see what they are doing. Why? Out of pure interest, curiosity and inspiration to help fuel new ideas one day at a time.
How young?
And Nate… Can you get the MyAvatars plugin working on my site? 😉 It rocks! 😀 But it’s not working at the moment for me… I think it’s my e-mail.
Who cares! It rocks!
As an entrepreneur who is working on a couple web startups and is still in college full-time(and started blogging about a month ago how about that!), I understand completely what you’re saying.
Through my blog I have met some pretty amazing people, and discovered some really interesting content. Aside from making friends, I’ve also made meaningful business connections. If such a small blog like mine(neomeme has only got around 50,000 hits so far) can do so much, I can only imagine what kinds of valuable connections bigger blogs can forge.
Good luck in all your enterprises- I’m glad I found another blog to read regularly.
Why do I blog? Why do I blog? Good question. I use my blog as a way to tell other people what I am doing in the internet world. And I use my blog to document my progress. Because my blog has a goal (to document my growth from a tiny internet to an earner to one day pay for medical school). I don’t really use my blog to make money…If you read my posts one day, you’ll see I am against putting adsense up on my blog. On my other sites? Yes. But not on my personal blog. I’ll get sponsorships and try and sell a few links, but I am not going to put adsense on it. Anyways…I’m one of those young entrepreneurs you mentioned in your post. Good luck with what ever you do!
I blog for a living.
(You don’t know for how long I’ve been waiting for someone to ask, lol)
Allen.H
I was meant to respond to this earlier.
Great post and it’s a vital question to ask yourself.
I don’t really know exactly why I blog. It’s certainly not for a living at the mo 🙂 I enjoy talking about certain aspects of Web Design and Domaining.
Oh and I’m not on Bebo or Myspace and it’s good for socialising!
1) Your CSS is messed up. The sidebar is below this post in IE 6.
2) I blog because I enjoy it and I hope to make some money 🙂
Hey Steve, thanks for visiting my blog…and thanks even more for the update about my CSS. I think it is because my images are wider than the main content page width. Either way, I need to fix that ASAP!
Money is a great motivator and I think anyone would be lieing if they said otherwise. However, for me personally, money is less important than the business connections and new friends I will make from blogging.
I started my blog as a way to express my own personal thoughts and experiences. You are definitely right, it is much harder than most people think to come up with quality meaningful content that stands out in the blogosphere.
Hey Nate, nice article! I started blogging as I have a love for personal finance topics and have thoroughly enjoyed my journey out of consumer debt. As such, I felt that I wanted to try and return some of the knowledge that I have learned to hopefully help at least one person work their way out of debt.
I’ve been at it for a few months now and it is exciting to see the traffic increase and receive comments from people that are getting something of value out of my posts. While I do have ads running, making money from my blog is not my true goal.
Hey, thanks for visiting my blog. I agree that I feel like I have gained a lot of knowledge over the past year, especially with regards to business and finance, so I would also like to share my experiences as well. I am also slowly implementing ads into my site, but like you, it is not my primary goal to make money from blogging.
Hi Nate . . .Great Post and you’ve captured what i’ve been feeling for the past few months by stating how hard it is to meet “like-minded” people. A lot of my friends are in different industries and I don’t think have a complete understanding of what i do. They probably just think I play on the internet all day and somehow make money off it. I really do want to hone my craft and to really do that, I really feel that I have to meet more “like-minded” people to develop dialog where I can learn and brainstorm. Anyways, Great Post and keep up the great work. Your passion clearly shows more than your money-grubbing tendencies ;)j/k
Interesting post Nate! I think i blog because i love reading other peoples blogs and finding out useful, clever stuff… so I want to return the favour. Also its nice to be able to let out all the stuff that runs around in my head and even get people to read it…. of course there is the squillions of dollars that I’ll be making any day now too to consider 🙂