The past couple days on facebook I’ve seen the exact same question posed by multiple people:
“If I started a blog, would you read it?”
This question makes my eyes twitch and my body overheat – mostly because of my history of blogging. You see, I started blogging when I was 16 – back then, they weren’t called blogs – they were just websites. Personal websites that contained what basically equated to a personal diary. It was voyeurism in it’s purest form online. Since then, I’ve evolved as a blogger – and currently have four different blogs:
1) Howmanyfrogs.com: This is my personal blog, my personal thoughts, everything, and nothing all at the same time. It’s the most like the blogs of the “old days” and is typically my most read blog.
2) SuburbanTrainwrecks.us: This is a duel blog with my best friend Mary, where I have moved all my political and teaching commentary. It serves as a seperation between the everything/nothing attitude of this blog.
3) My secret livejournal: This is my diary. It is everything that never made it to this blog because fear of losing my job, and pissing people off.
4) The back up: I have a blog that is currently a back up of everything I’ve EVER written from 1999 onward. It is the most complete view of my life, my thoughts and my progression as a human since it covers 13 years of my writing. This blog also archives all my tweets and my facebook posts and anything I wrote for school / college.
Over the course of my life – I have had the following things happen because of my blog:
1) I have been on the cover of the Washington Post
2) I have received corporate sponsorship
3) I have turned howmanyfrogs into a monetized blog
4) I have received option offers for my back ups to turn into novels
5) I have met some of the most people ever and enriched my life through knowing them
None of these things have been my goal however. I blog because I like writing, and sharing my experiences with the world. I blog because it’s something I enjoy doing.
So when I see posts on facebook asking people if they would read a blog – I twitch, because they’re doing it for the wrong reasons.
It’s not about if you have the highest readership. It’s not about if people want to read it. It’s not about the money. It’s about the fact that YOU have something to say, and you need a place to say it. It’s about having your voice out there – in the vast internet collective.
So to answer each and every single one of them in a single post – yes – if you started a blog I would probably read. In fact, if any of my real life friends started a blog (like some of them have done in the recent months) I would link to it from this blog – giving you an insta-readership-bump. That shouldn’t be the reason you do it though. Trust me – you’ll never succeed if it is.