There are a variety of reasons that most people take the time and effort to write a blog and share their thoughts with the world. Regardless of what style of blog that you write and how frequently you post, creating content that generates interest can not only be difficult, but also opens yourself up to a certain amount of vulnerability. With that said, why would anyone take the plunge and create a website to post their opinions, ideas, and stories? There are probably more reasons than these, but here are some common reasons that drove us to start our site a couple of years ago.
- Connect with Like-Minded People – One of the great things about starting a blog is getting know other people who have similar experiences or share similar opinions as your own. Whether it is through comments, viewing other people’s sites, or getting to meet people in person, there is a certain amount of bonding that occurs when you connect through blogging. We know that for ourselves, we have learned as much from the other people we have connected with as we have from our own personal experiences. We get inspiration by reading the stories of others and from the feedback that we get on the stories that we have shared.
Iceland - Sharing Your Thoughts, Opinions, Expertise, and Experiences – Perhaps the main reason that someone would want to start a blog is simply to share things about yourself and what you know. We would sit with friends and tell the stories about the places that we visited and the experiences that we had; they would tell us that would should share our stories online. It was a big leap of faith to start sharing our stories because we didn’t have any idea what to expect and we weren’t sure what kind of reaction we would get. Thankfully, for the most part our experience has been positive, although we have received a couple of negative comments, which we have taken with a grain of salt. Hopefully everyone who reads this will understand that they have something to say and that their positive thoughts and ideas are worthwhile.
Colosseum in Rome - Express Yourself Creatively – There are a variety of ways that people are able to express themselves creatively through their blog site. Obviously, the words that you write and the stories that you share (both fictional and factual) are a form a creativity in and of itself. But there are other expressions of creativity, such as your logos, the pictures that you share, or just the topics that you decide to cover. Each of these are part of the creative process for creating a blog site. We consider ourselves to be amateur photographers, so taking photos during our travels and choosing which ones we include in our posts can be a daunting process. Those photos have become a window into the world of our travel and we probably think as much about the pictures that we choose as the words that we write. Getting validation for your creative choices can be one of the most satisfying feelings that you can get from posting on your site.
Standing on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece - Improve Your Communication Skills – Perhaps not an obvious reason to start a blog, but the more that you write and put yourself out there, the better you will become at communicating with others. We have found that the people that have the best blog sites that we follow spend as much time reading other people’s posts as they do writing their own. Communication is a two-way street and seeing how other people express themselves, whether through humor, sarcasm, optimism, or just conversational, can lead to stretching your own communication style. When we look back at some of early blog posts and compare those to what we write now, we realize that we have morphed our writing style over time.
Incallajta in Bolivia - Earn Money or Compensation – Not everyone who creates a blog site is interested in making money from their work. For them, the reasons that we have stated above are enough for them to be completely satisfied. Other people want to earn money or even make a living from their blog site. Whether by selling items, doing affiliate marketing, getting advertisers, getting freelance writing opportunities, or being compensated with products for mentioning them, there are a lot of ways to earn money from your blog site. We would love to make money from the work that we do, but we aren’t willing to change our opinions or way that we write about our travels to do so. There are a lot of other people out there who can provide advise and guidance into how to monetize your blog, but with hard work and consistency it seems like an achievable goal. Some people seem to want to shame anyone who wants to earn money for their blog site, but we don’t think there is anything wrong with people being compensated for the time and effort that they put into their sites.
Heidelberg, Germany
There are probably many other reasons for starting a blog, but those are some of the ones that have inspired us to put ourselves out there. What are some of the reasons that drove you to join this crazy community of bloggers? Are you getting everything from blogging that you were hoping for?
