5 reasons NOT to start a blog
There are millions of blogs out there today, and many more starting up each day. Have a great idea for a blog? Want to show everybody what you ate today? How about pictures of your dog? Go for it. Blogging is fun. Just be sure you’re not starting a blog for the wrong reasons.
1. To Make Money
Yes, there are bloggers making a lot of money. Odds are, you won’t be one of them.
It’s very easy to sign up for AdSense and have ads start showing up on your blog. But unless you are getting fairly significant traffic the typical 1-3% click through of 10 cent clicks is not going to net you much money. Sure there are affiliate programs that pay pretty well, but you still need to have a good traffic flow to see any type of significant money.
If you do want to try and make a profession out of your blog, ProBlogger.net is a good place to start.
2. For Your Ego
It’s nice to think that as soon as you start up a blog people will flock to it because of the insightful things you write. It’s nice to think that people will see your name and come read your blog. It’s nice to think that your readers will recognize your name or your face in the airport because they like your blog just that much.
Think of all the blogs you’ve read. How many of the authors would you recognize if you sat down next to them on a plane? How many of their names would you recognize?
3. You don’t want to customize it
It’s amazing how many Wordpress blogs are still using the default Kubrick theme – you know, the one with the blue gradient on top with “Another Wordpress Blog” under the title.
If you lack the HTML skill to create a custom theme for your blog, do what I did on this blog and find a downloadable theme. In my case I know enough HTML and PHP to create a custom theme, and have done a couple, but I found the blog.txt theme and liked it enough that it wasn’t worth creating a new theme from scratch.
4. You don’t know how to write, or don’t want to
I know that I’m not a great writer. Decent maybe, but not great. Fortunately for me, conversational writing, which is how I write, tends to work better for blogs. Looking back at some of the first things I published to the internet I can tell that I have gotten better though. The point – no matter your writing skill level you can improve. It just takes practice, and blogging is great practice.
The second half is more of a problem. If you don’t want to write, why are you thinking of starting a blog? There is an entire industry of freelance writers that will write blog posts for you, but good posts cost money and I’m sure you aren’t starting your blog to lose money.
5. You have trouble sticking with projects
Unless you manage to have an early blog posting Dugg or Slashdotted, odds are good that you will be posting for more than a year before you see any type of significant traffic. But stick with it. If you manage to post just 3 times a week for that first year you will have 150 posts. Hopefully something in there will get the interest of search engines and links.
But blogging is still lots of fun
I’ve got several blogs. Some get traffic, some don’t. But that’s not really the point. I blog because I enjoy the process. I enjoy seeing people leave comments on what I’ve written. And yes, I enjoy seeing 10 cents show up in my Google account.
So if you have an idea for a blog, even if it’s just telling the world what you did today, go for it.
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