Ready, Set, Blog!

I first started blogging in 1997 on GeoCities, back then we called it a "personal homepage". I moved to Sydney, Australia for a few months and wanted a way to share the experience with my family back home without sending tons of group emails. It was pretty much a one way communication and you needed a few technical skills, like html, to get it done. But today, with Blogger, Wordpress and Social Media in general, blogging has gone mainstream and pretty much anyone can do it.

If you are an expert at something, have a special interest or just have a lot to say, a blog can be a great outlet. If you have something to sell, are an artist or have a rare skill to share, even better! Its a good idea to search first and see if someone else already had that great idea. While that doesn't prevent you from also doing it, it can give you an idea of how interested others might be in the topic. Make sure you have a lot to say. Not just a few weeks worth of postings, but A LOT to say. Make a list of topics and ideas first and see how far you get. If you choose a topic you are both passionate and knowledgeable about, you have a better chance at success. If you do not have enough to write about it will fizzle out quickly, before you have a chance to build and engage your audience.

First, consider your intent. What is the purpose of your blog? What do you want the result to be? Is your goal just to get the word out about something, or gain an actual following? While it is perfectly natural for your blog to evolve over time, you want to be consistent too. Short, regular blog posts are more attractive to most readers then the occasional opus. But then again, that depends on your audience. For my blogs on diet and technology, I try to post three times a week. For my personal blog that is primarily for family, I post monthly or after a big event. Too many posts and people get overwhelmed. Too few and they lose interest.

Readers are your audience. They can be friends and family, colleagues from work or school, or just complete strangers. Spend some time thinking about your target audience and who they are. Without readers, your blog is just an online not-so-private diary. Creating a dialog with your readers through comments, polls and content is a great way to get ideas for future blog posts and interact with your audience. I also find communicating with other bloggers who have similar interests and sites to be an effective way to reach a new audience.

Remember that what you put out there in the Blogsphere will potentially be there forever. Even if you delete your posts or even the whole blog, it can still exist in some form and show in search results for years to come. Keep in mind possible future relationships, job interviews and commitments before you hit that "Publish" button. Once you have posted it and its "On The Internet" you lose some control of it. If you have a unique name, like me, it will be very easy to find your every typo online in 2020.

You can even make money from blogging, but that is really only possible if you have found a regular and large audience. Programs like Google Adsense, Amazon Affiliates and dozens of others will pay you when your readers click on ads and order products. The thought is that this reader would not have otherwise come to their site, if they had not seen it through your blog. Its much like paying for a "Sales Lead". Companies may offer to sponsor your blog, place advertisements on it or provide you with free samples to review and recommend to your readers. For most bloggers this is pie in the sky talk, as getting more then a handful of readers can be very difficult.

If you are lucky enough to launch a successful blog be careful, those earnings are all taxable and a recent FTC ruling even mandates that bloggers musst reveal any freebies they have received when reviewing a product or face up to an $11,000 fine. The content of your blog should be original work and you the sole owner of everything on it. Copyright laws apply to blogs too. You can embed Youtube videos and links to other sites, but typically you cannot include images or reprint material without express permission from the owner.