Blogging – Is It For You

Every now and then I get questions from an aspiring blogger wanting to know, whether it is the right move to start blogging. While I’m very passionate about blogging myself, I also understand that it might not be the means to an end for somebody else.

So by looking at what qualities would be beneficial for an aspiring blogger, I’m not claiming to know it all. The article is there to give hopeful bloggers and idea on what it takes to build up a successful blog. By success I don’t mean a ton of money either, even though it is the ultimate goal most of us aspire to. Including myself – I have never made any secrets that ultimately I want to make a lot of money online.

Success can be measured in many ways. For me initially it was the stick ability to keep writing pretty much any day. That is really the beginning to it all. You need to be able to leverage your business and your abilities and this can only be done with persistence.

The income I strive for is not limited to be coming from this blog either. The blog is more so designed to share my industry knowledge with you including my failures and successes. This blog is also just an extension of my passion for the IM industry and to further sharpen my writing skills.

Success can also be measured by a steady increase in traffic, which is happening right here too. Ultimate success is financial freedom.

So lets look at the qualities we should possess to even get started:

1. Do you like writing – As blogging is predominantly done with the written word, it would be beneficial to you to start here. Chances are that if you don’t like writing at all, then maybe blogging isn’t for you. Alternatively you could start a video blog instead.
2. Are you motivated – enough to write to your blog often? All though it isn’t necessary to blog every day, it is certainly a bonus if you do. That might be easy in the short term, but do you think you can do it over the long term? Motivation and passion is a key point regarding this.
3. Can you communicate - As blogs move more and more into social networking and web 2.0 it is beneficial if you have the ability to network with others and communicate. It will help to spread the word about you.
4. What’s your scope - Now this is a must! You need to be 100% clear on what your blog is all about. Whether it is about an industry, a niche, a hobby, your travels …whatever it is, make sure you have some sort of direction about what you want to blog about.
5. What’s your time schedule - Quite frankly, you might struggle to keep up the motivation to blog if you only have 30 minutes per week. I’m not saying it can’t be done. Just be realistic about your availability to blog, network and comment.
6. What is your ego - Have you got a healthy mixture of ego and humility? We need to have this balance to portray our ability of self and stay humble to learn new experiences. Being able to have the right blend of these character traits is something I consistently strive for myself.
7. Are you a techwiz - While it is not necessary to have the ability to manipulate html and php within blogs, it certainly helps if you can.
8. Introvert or Extrovert - If you are an introvert, then blogging might not be the right platform for you, unless you keep your blog private. But that would miss the point. Blogging is an extroverts way of putting ourself into the public eye every day. The moment your post a blog entry, you are in the public spotlight. Once your posts are in cyberspace, there is no turning back. As long as you are aware of this and it’s ok for you, then you should be right.
9. Do you like to read – See, I’m a reader. I always have been since my childhood. Being a reader helps with blogging as we spend a lot of time reading other blogs for inspiration and social networking.
10. Discipline and Organization - Once your blog gets enough traffic for you to having to juggle posts, comment moderation and organizing blog related work you might need to have the ability to work in an ordered fashion. This will no more be more apparent then when you are successful. It is very easy to kid ourself that we worked, when in fact we did nothing than browsing the net.

As you can see, this list isn’t finished at all. I could go on and talk about this and that. But I hope that you will find some sort of value with this if you are thinking about starting your own blog. Or even get serious at it. It is in no way meant to be stopping you from getting started, more so a helping hand if you wish, to point you to the qualities that matter most.

I would love to hear from you and what your thoughts are in regards to this post. It would be great, if we could build a comprehensive list together.

Thanks for visiting

Monika

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