This is the companion blog to “The Rough Guide to Blogging,” available now (Fall 2006).
This is going to sound obvious but at the base of it, blogging is writing, and writing often begets better writing. So what happens when you get kids to blog a lot? They improve their writing skills, their vocabulary skills, and their organizational skills. What about improving their nunchuk, bowhunting, and computer hacking skills you ask? Well, that’s a separate thing… One handful of skills at a time!
It’s the Holy Grail of blogging: making money and turning blogging into a profession. While millions of people start blogs without any intention of making money off of their “hobby,” I’m positive nobody would turn down the opportunity to make a few bucks. It’s like making music. You can do it for fun in your garage, but if the opportunity comes along and a neighbor just happens to know an A&R guy and he likes your stuff, suddenly you are starry-eyed and dreaming of cash.
When I was on television — I like to say that, just to add an extra oomph to what I have in life — one of the questions presented to me in the brief five minute interview was “Can people make money doing this?” I’m sure I gave an eloquent, well-composed, coolly delivered answer that compared the blogger-conomy with Princetonian principles of supply and demand. Or maybe I said, “Yes it is possible to make money blogging, but it’s certainly not easy.”
The truth is that there are a lot of people making money blogging (and the media is pushing that angle) — but you probably won’t be one of them. It takes a combination of hard work, a large audience, and maybe a pinch of luck to take your blog from the late night past time to back breaking day job.
Bloggers have quit their jobs, been fired, and started entire new companies just in the name of blogging. Some have succeeded, some haven’t. Check out some of their stories, and if you still want to have a go of it, then figure out some way to crack the barrier between amateur and professional blogging. The odds are pretty steep, but the rewards are getting increasingly large also.
Modern Life Is Rubbish points us towards “Common traits of the top few blogs,” with nifty little pie-charts (reminiscent of our favorite game, Trivial Pursuit) that depict the percentage of bloggers using a particular blog platform, font, background color, and main subject of the blog. Neat-o!
Neil Patel of Pronet Advertising presents “My 50 Favorite Blogging Resources.” The list is well organized and includes blog articles, platforms, templates, and so much more. Plus, it seems like Neil has excellent taste since “The Rough Guide to Blogging” is on his list of recommended books. Bravo, bravo!
In addition, one of the commenters on this post suggested another excellent resource: “The Dirty Dozen’s 12 Suggestions For Making Your Blog Mark in the Blogosphere.”
WeblogToolsCollection.com is sponsoring a Blogging Essay Competition — for cash! The competition starts today and runs for the next 30 days. You can submit as many essays as you can crank out (of 1000 words or more) and there are prizes for runner-ups too. Oh right, the big prize? A cool $150 bucks.
Go read the rules and get to writing already!
Here’s a real oldie (from 2002) but goodie: “How to Write a Better Weblog” This classic article encourages bloggers to offer something new and to amuse your readers. And let’s not forget about the best line, “Great writing cant be taught, but atrocious writing is entirely preventable.”
Good blogging never goes out of style, and neither does good (writing) advice. Read and react.
“Corporate blogging, though in its infacy, has got a shot in the arm… It is estimated that forty Fortune 500 companies publish corporate blogs, allowing CEOs, employees to bypass the public relations department, journalists and industry analysts and speak directly to the public. Amazon, Cisco and Oracle were early adopters with AMD, Dell, Kodak, GE, Intel, Microsoft, Sun, Yahoo and Xerox following suit.”
-Business Standard-
A lot of businesses — and people — think that by setting up a blog, they’ll be able to add value to their company. Well, as we already know, that’s simply not true. Blogging is no magical elixir. Just like in the late 90’s when every company thought that by simply owning internet real estate in their name, they could capture the attention of millions of potential customers. How’d that one turn out? Well, have you seen the web recently? Littered with the homepages of businesses that wanted to get in on the Internet craze but didn’t know how to do it.
It’s not their fault. Homepages, and the Internet, were marketed as a panacea to flagging sales and limited markets. The Internet was the contact point to (potentially) millions of customers. Whoops.
With that in mind, let’s look at blogging. Few companies really understand what a blog is, what it means to have one, why they have one, and how to leverage its power. In fact, even many of the companies with successful blogs don’t know how they did it. Maybe it was just one employee blogging away quietly that earned a company “blog-cred,” or it was a hit-and-miss collection of journals from employees that sparked enthusiasm, or maybe it was a company wide effort to execute, implement, and join the blogging revolution.
Either way, there are wrong and right ways to go about blogging your business. For an article about the wrong way to do it, here’s “Why Dell doesn’t understand blogging.” See what one company is doing wrong, and you might be able to figure out what you can do right.
Where is blogging going? Will it grow? Is the hype over? Has it established itself as a force in journalism? Which politician will use blogging the most effectively? These are the sorts of questions that blog pundits are asking every day. And when they have some spare time they’ll weigh in with predictions and stir the pot a little. What’s difficult about reading articles about blogging is that space has to be reserved to explain what a blog is in every article. Everything is essentially a “Blogging 101 — plus a few comments.”
Imagine having to re-explain what a computer is every time you wanted to comment on the state of computer hardware and software. That’s what it’s like to write about blogging. It makes for comprehensive recaps, but if you follow the “scene,” it can also seem as if you’re constantly treading water.
When will we have to stop explaining what blogging is? Oh wait, that’s my job!
Having said that, it’s always interesting to see what people were writing about blogging just one short year ago. So in that spirit, here’s a few articles from the spring of 2005, one of the doom and gloom variety, and one wondering about the future of blogging.
What are blogs great for? They can give a voice to a niche that is rarely given any mainstream attention. If you love baord games like me, you’re gonna love “The Journal of Board Game Design” and “Gone Gaming.” Both are (super) in-depth examinations of board games and will bring to light exactly what you’re doing when you’re rolling that dice or drawing a card. Unless you’re in Vegas, in which case you’re probably only losing money.
And when I say “board game” I’m not referring to games like Monopoly or Chutes-n-Ladders. Just because a game requires a board to play does not mean that it’s a board game. There’s a huge world of difference between games played for fun, and games played for fun and strategy/tactics.
Get serious, get in the game.
