Doing a personal blog may or may not be what you’re wanting to do for a career, but you might see it as an easy way to make money, that is until you start doing it and realize how hard it really is.
Blogging become difficult when you realize you’re committing to posting daily, sometimes many times a day to keep your readers engaged. You’re content needs to be constantly coming in fresh, even though the old stuff stays out there forever and helps to build your audience.
When you blog, the more you let other people in on your life the more engaged they become in your blog. They want to connect with you and feel as though they personally know you. They come up to you when you attend conventions like Affiliate Summit and expect to act like you’ve been best friends forever and while that’s cool initially, it requires you to do some soul searching and ask what you get out of the relationship.
The bigger your blog becomes, the more of a celebrity you become in your inner circle. Your readers form an opinion of who you are, and what motivates you based on what you write, not from actually knowing you and even the best bloggers paint a picture that is different than who they really are.
That became very obvious to me when I attended ASW11 as I found some people who I liked to read to be people that I didn’t care for in real life, and others to be even more genuine then I thought they were from their blogs.
That said, I really question if blogging is for me. I’m not really interested in elevating myself to Super Blogger, but am fascinated with the industry. As I learn more, I’m thinking at some point I’m going to cut off the blog and switch over to a different strategy, but until then I’m writing what I learn in an effort to reinforce the value of the education.
You might ask what’s inspired this line of thinking, and yesterday I started reading “The Four Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris. He’s defined what I’ve had in the past as the perfect lifestyle, and I’m thinking that that’s where I’m headed.
I strongly suggest you check out Tim Ferris’s “The Four Hour Work Week” if you haven’t already. I’ve only read forty pages, but it’s right on the money.