Blog Republic

10 top things that blogging has taught me

by Darren

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In life it pays to take a look back at your progress and gain insight into what’s working for you. And most importantly you need to take a minute and think about what you’ve learned. This post is an attempt to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned from blogging. I’d love to hear your input on the subject, as well.

1) Blogging is all about the people. You don’t start a blog to talk to yourself. You start a blog for the dialogue. The real value of blogs is in the interaction between the readers and the blogger. The best insights come from the spontaneous conversations that build up around talking points.

2) There is a ton of ego satisfaction in blogging. I didn’t start blogging in order to derive personal satisfaction. I did it for the money. But what I found was that people appreciated my words, and were happy to express their pleasure to me. It can’t help but put a smile on your face when you’ve been told you’re doing a great job.

3) Blogging has already presented itself with many business opportunities. The internet in general has made communications so easy, that it’s simpler than ever to get a new business venture off the ground. Blogging puts you in a position to meet more people and to share ideas about all kinds of ventures.

4) Blogging provides opportunities for social networking that are beneficial. Blogging means you get to talk to more people from all over the world than you could otherwise. You can also attend events and meet even more. You don’t need to live in isolation as a blogger, even if you work from home.

5) You need to be productive when you “blog”. I don’t care how you define blogging, but it’s an activity that can add up to many hours in a day, so you have to monitor your time in order to be productive. You’ll spend your time looking for information, commenting in other people’s blogs, and writing. So make sure your time is well spent.

6) Blogging is a business, just like any other. There’s money it. People are competing. This isn’t the blogosphere of a few years back where amateurs marvelled at the ability to earn pennies for publishing their passionate words. No, this is a highly commercialized marketplace where the stakes are high.

7) The same principles that apply to gaining success everywhere, apply to the world of blogging. Blogging isn’t a discipline that exists in isolation, and it’s not a wholely unique concept. Rather it’s an evolving medium that works like many other human endeavors. You’ll have winners and losers, laughs and tears, and everything in between. Be realistic and know that hard work is the only thing that can help you.

Blogging is a marthon and not a sprint. If you’ve been blogging for a few years and feel fatigued, wondering if it will all pay off, keep in mind that there are people who’ve been blogging for 10 years or more! Tell them how you think you should have more fame earlier. And even if you have success at your blog for awhile, it’s not guaranteed it’ll last. Blogging is all about working for the long term. You replace the people who fall off each month when you continue to apply pressure.

9) There’s very little glamour in blogging. I mean, come on, if you had to portray a blogger in a major Hollywood movie, how would you do it? Would you show them furiously typing? Perhaps a scene of them perusing Digg, or reviewing their log files. Blogging is typing followed by waiting around. At times the wait is very short, at other times it’s interminably long, but one thing’s for certain: reporters aren’t going to suddenly quit following Paris Hilton around because they hear “Scoble is in town to Party.”

10) There’s money in blogging. As little or as much as you make of it. There are bloggers cruising the world in yachts and bloggers eating dog food in an apartment with the gas shut off. There’s also everything in between. It’s your world, this one of blogging, and you can make it into whatever you want it to be. That’s powerful stuff in modern times, and maybe the best endorsement I can make of the field.

In parting, I urge you to blog early and blog often. Blog until your fingers are sore and your reader’s RSS programs go kaput. Blog so hard that Google sends you a message telling you they just don’t have the storage to keep your posts anymore. But whatever you do, don’t give up on making blogging into the very best profession or business you possibly can.

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