When I spoke to my friend about giving me a hand at blogging he didn’t get it. He put forth several reasons why he couldn’t join – I call them excuses. One thing that is hard to explain is to clarify the myths. I heard things like “I don’t know anything about that subject” and “what do I get out of it”. There’s no one answer to these questions but I’ll share my experience so that next time someone has queries and doubts I’ll point them to this post.

You don’t need to be an expert to blog. My teacher once asked me a question which I couldn’t answer. Then he explained and asked my to pick up the marker, come to the board and explain it to the class. I could forget any lesson but not this one. You learn the most when you learn and teach it to others. As a blogger if you don’t have a clue what you are talking about, you’ll be corrected, you learn and you’ll learn more when you blog (teach) it.
Blogging for money and solely for money is not unethical. That’s because to get that money you’ll need to sell. If you thought it is easy, you’ll have to slog. Basically you don’t get the returns until you show the goods. Blogging is a serious business.
Everything that inspires you is not plagiarism, copyright violation or copying. “Heya – you can’t read that and blog about it!” – well I can. Blogging is all about expressing, sharing the expression, commenting, taking the topic to your own blog and elaborating on the same… if quoting the exact words then necessarily with a link and attribution to the original source. Plagiarism means passing other’s work as your own. Copyright is that your right to copy a thing – be it in the sense of cut-copy-paste or creating a duplicate – is restricted. Copying means… just the dictionary word. The point is whatever you do, make sure you attribute the original authors for the inspiration and present your own ideas.
You won’t make it in a day or a week or a month… may be not even in a year. Just takes time. It will take time for Google to catch up with you, Google will index this information and people will take time to find your blog in the search results. You’ll take time to build the keywords into the blog and people will take time to spread your blog to social media. You will take three to six months to decide whether you want to continue. Then the results show up.
Content Popularity – Most of the content which gets Diggs doesn’t get it not because of the originality of the content but the presentation and interest it generates. Most of the content that goes to StumbleUpon and del.icio.us goes there because it is informative and people like to come back to it. You focus on the right things the sooner your blog gets visitors.
You learn the most about blogging during your first six months as a blogger. Similarly you’ll have to slog the most to get your first 1000 RSS subscribers – the rest come seeing the others and the polished blogger that you then become. The 80-20 rule applies.
You’ll quit, change your domain, change your niche, CMS or otherwise leave your blog untraceable in the first three months. More than half of those who remain will quit within the remaining year (somewhat 80/20 rule). You’ll just know and want to make up your mind again seeing the slooow growth.
The chances of your blog getting the limelight/popularity multiplies as the first year passes by – because most of the starters have left and you are amongst those who have proven ability to survive. You are just waiting to get Dugg.
You’ll make more from your secondary blog provided you launch after the first year of experience. Because now you have evolved as a writer, communicator, blogger and as an entrepreneur. This will put you in a better perspective to look at things. You new blog will have rich and attractive content but you’ll fight to hit the balance between multiple blogs.
“Free” will take your blog a long way. People like free stuff. Give them a free e-book or a T-shirt once in a while. They will definitely come if only for the kicks of knowing what’s up.
Making some notes (hard-copies) that hang around which you can see and touch will provide you the support that you as a budding blogger and a toddler will need to fly past the first few months. This will contain why you started to blog and what is the mission and purpose of this blog.
Don’t spend on your blog – if you do, make sure your blog can earn it and pay the bills. Just be smart and try to abstain from spending in the first few months – you never know if you change your mind tomorrow and find something to do. Also as an entrepreneur – never invest from your own pocket (will pay you more seeing things as they are in the global market hitting a slowdown). Let your blog make you some money a part of which you can invest back into it to sustain the business.
Blogging about things which you can touch and hold and make and break is a lot easier than blogging ideas and preaching. As a budding blogger you’ll take your time to evolve as a thinker and present opinion that counts or sells or even means enything. Just pick up a thing – a camera – and start blogging. Review it, tell how to use it, blog about the tips your users can use and the likes. It’s easier to blog about something that you see and touch and feel and can open inside-out – to rephrase.
More time you spend blogging, the more your subscribers and visitors multiply. One post a day will get you one hit from a subscriber, six posts a day will multiply the number by six. That’s how the numbers grow. You need to be there and make it happen.
All the bloggers who survived and are still making money are able to do so because they didn’t quit. At the end of the day you’ll know it was worth it. That’s because a huge number of blogs come up every month but the overall number of blogs on the internet remains the same.

At the end if there’s something I missed or you’d like to share, please comment about it here.