Blogging is like the modern day lemonade stand. Low cost start up, lots of competition, location, and marketing is everything.
I started my blog because I wanted to write. Correction. I couldn’t not write anymore—and I needed a place to throw it all up. So twelve years after college I started over.
But I’ve learned that while I originally wanted my blog to serve as an online writing portfolio, blogging is so much more. In fact, a good blogger is not necessarily a good writer (see PerezHilton.com). I tried to pick a priority. First I tried blogging. I liked it. I unleashed heartseverywhere everywhere. Then I realized I wasn’t writing anymore. I was cross-posting and reading other blogs. I hadn’t even began the commenting bit.
You have to comment on other people’s sites to get recognition, cross-link, be all over the place. Drop your thread onto as many sites as possible. Increase your visibility. Get more keywords. Track the keywords. More comments. More links. More keywords.
So I switched the focus to writing. But then I was putting up writing that no one was seeing. Shit. The dilemma.
So now I’m trying to do both.
Never before has marketing been so free. It’s all I could have dreamed of. To grow my business, I merely needed to mouth off all over the place. I had to give my two cents to anyone and everyone because everyone wants comments. Give them and get them. It’s a comments orgy all over the Blogosphere.
It’s Blogerific! People who didn’t before, now have a community—like an online sorority. The blog could be a friend, a social crutch, freedom from insanity. It’s public therapy, an open journal, an open photo album, your podium to the world.
I thought it might be interesting to start a blog for the very purpose of seeing how big I could make it; pick a topic even if it’s not of interest me and promote the shit out of it. Like a social experiment—just because (I didn’t have a job). Comment on anywhere and everywhere that relates to that topic. Blog like it’s my JOB. Sell my soul to the Web demons.
Or I guess I could stick to being me. Out of the billions on the Internet, isn’t there a group that will like me for my boring, weird, funny, ironic, sarcastic, better you than me kind of way?
