WritingThoughts

Boy am I behind on my blogging!!

There’s a new meme going around the blogosphere–it asks bloggers to list five reasons why they blog. I was tagged to participate by Randa Clay over at Lumps of Clay.

While I’m flattered to participate, I have to admit that this exercise was a little challenging for me. I’m a fairly new to blogging, so it is all kind of a grand experiment for me. Where can I take it? What can I achieve? In some ways, only time will tell.

I did manage to come up with five reasons, but some of them are more along the lines of a future vision for the blog than reasons why I blog right now.

So, without further ado, five reasons why I blog:

1. To help people. Actually, this is the reason that I began writing, many years ago. Over the years, I’ve received help from many writers and I’ve appreciated that help very much. I try to live according to the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”). Since I know how much others help has meant to me, blogging enables me to give some of that help back to others.
2. To attract potential customers to my writing business. Admittedly, this isn’t happening and it’s completely my fault. As you can see by clicking the tabs above, this site is a work in progress. I envision a place on this site where potential customers can look and see samples of my writing style and view my writing experience. So far, I haven’t finished putting that information onto the site, but I will.
3. To be part of a community. Blogging has allowed me to get to know other writers, other WAHMs, and a whole variety of other bloggers with whom I would otherwise never interact. I can think of several bloggers that I would probably never have gotten to know had I not gotten involved in blogging.
4. To experiment. It’s kind of fun being in control of a website. As a writer, most of the work I do is assigned to me. That means someone else tells me what to write, describes how to write it, and gives me a deadline. With my blog, I’m in control of the whole process. If I wake up one day and decide to post in white letters on a black background (ugh and double ugh!!!), well who’s going to stop me? Not only that, I get access to all the cool website stats (and I’m one of those who thinks that’s interesting).
5. To make money. Alright, I’m obviously not making any money right now. I have one affiliate, but no one has purchased from them. I’ve gone back and forth about putting Google Adsense and Amazon on the site. Frankly, I don’t see the downside. Yeah, I know that I probably won’t be able to retire on what that brings in, but it’s bound to be a little more than I am earning from the blog right now.

Now, I am supposed to tag some other bloggers to participate. I tag

• Phil Nash of Unintentionally Blank
• Carson Brackney
• Yuwanda Black of InkwellEditorial

Have fun guys!

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