Why Blog? – Is it worth all of the hassel

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I have been at this blogging thing for a little over 6 months in total, the first three months I was setting up a company blog called the bpindex blog which is a news portal for the construction industry.   I enjoyed this so I set up this blog your on now about 3 months ago.  A friend asked a simple question.  “Why blog”, this set me to thinking why do people get into blogging and is it worth it.  Here are my thoughts:

Why people decide to start blogging

There are a number of reasons why people start a blog, over time these reasons evolve into something very different in my experience, I will outline the major reasons below, if the reason you started a blog is not listed please let me know

Make loads of money

If you read anything about blogging you will see that people are talking about making money and lots of it, this is entirely possible, however it is the exception and not the rule for every blog that generates a living wage there are probably thousand’s that don’t, so if this is your only motivation good luck as it takes time to build the revenue.

Build your Brand

This is either a personal or business branding exercise.  This is the main reason I launched this site, I wanted to build my personal brand.  Blogs are a great way of doing this and if you create interesting content and promote yourself it works well.

Share your knowledge

Some people have a genuine desire to give something back, they have been successful, built lots of knowledge and now its time to share the love.

Lifestyle change

This is tied in with making lots of money however the motivation is very different these people may well work in the rat race and want to escape, this can be done by blogging and generating revenue from your blog.

Are any of these the reason you started blogging?

Pros of blogging

• Rewarding
• You can make money
• Enhance your brand
• Get orders and work

Blogging can bring many rewards; it can pay your bills, build your personal or business brand, generate business and give you a sense of enormous satisfaction.   You write a post which generates a few comments, this is a great feeling as what you have written has helped people and they have taken the time to thank you and get more information, you have affected their lives in a positive way.

Whatever the reason people start a blog, I am sure that the reward of helping people becomes one of the prime factors in continuing with your blog.  An estimated 75% of blogs last less than 3 months, this is because blogging is hard work.

Cons of blogging

• Time consuming
• Hard work

I have a young family, a full-time job and not a lot of time.  Blogging takes time, you need to research your piece, write it read it and edit it.  If like me you are looking two to three times a week this is a lot of extra time out of my day, I want to spend time with my family and I have a job to do.  I estimate my blog takes up 5-10 hours a week this is a big commitment and sometimes it feels like it’s not worth the effort.

In Conclusion, Why blog?

This is about me again I am afraid however to illustrate what you can get from Blogging let me outline what I have achieved from blogging.

1. A real feeling of achievement I am dyslexic and writing has never been my strong point however I have received positive feedback  and I hope I have helped people this is truly rewarding and the main reason I will continue this journey.
2. My personal brand has grown massively, opportunities are opening up that I have never envisioned, I was at a trade show and someone asked me if I had come across the “Advertising in construction” site, I was amazed as this was my blog.  I have had a number of business opportunity enquiries that are really interesting.
3. Although my blog has not made a massive amount of money, I have received a bit of revenue from the blog and this is great, as my traffic grows (see my stats) this will increase I hope, I have not spent a lot of time on focusing on the advertising as I feel that I need quality content before I push this to me readers. 98WTC9WGXE94

So I would say to all those who are looking for something new to try blogging, I have a series of blogs that I think will help you to create a good blog, please have a read.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this please let me know in the comments.