WHY BLOGGING IS NOT FRUITLESS

I used to think of blogging as another way for over opinionated people to spew their pseudo intellectual pearls on to the rest of the world. I will go as far saying that the word blog itself made me want to throw up in the sense that it was a word used largely by people that I perceived to be complete assholes. One day a childhood friend said "You should start a blog" and I decided to give it a shot just to see if I could be a lesser evil. The first year I had this blog I only put out some six blog entries total and did not bother to look at stats or anything of the sort.

As time went on I kept hearing that question about why I wasn't doing anything with my blogs. I never bothered to answer because frankly I felt that I did not need to do so. One day everything changed as my paid writing assignments started to wane a bit. I began to wonder about my writing and how I could stay relevant to myself. I was reminded of a tidbit  read my first day of class in Full Sail's MFA in Creative Writing program, that tidbit was that writers write. I hear that over and over and I realized that I would be doing myself a grave injustice if I stopped writing on the basis of what I was or was not earning.

Over the last six months I have been averaging something close to thirty entries a month and over that period of time I have been reminding myself of several things. First thing is that writers starting out have to be consistent in order to get somewhere. The second thing I remembered was that writers must self promote in all possible avenues. Every writer has a strong point and that can be anything from telling a story, to relating facts, to giving an opinion. I was reminded that building up volume of work helps get your name out there. In a six month period I have managed to build my stats to nearly 14,000 views in over 180 entries. I have finally taken in enough income to buy myself three candy bars from my google adsense and I am seeing exposure of my work in other countries even if it's only ten people that hit the page.  

If I continue to go at the pace I am going I know eventually I will hit some sort of niche. Blogging also makes social media useful as it's good to showcase your work in facebook, and twitter as well as google plus in order get that work in front of as many people as you can and make sure they are as varied a crowd as can be. The bottom line is that if your serious about getting exposure and building something relevant to put in your resume a blog is a great way to go.