Before Blogging

Before Blogging: What Challenges Did You Overcome To Start Your Blog?

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine a time before blogging. There has been some discussion around the internet lately about how and why people started their blogs. My journey to blogging isn’t that clear.

 

I really can’t remember why or how I started – I’ve been writing online in one way or another for about ten years now. I’ve written fan fiction, been in forums, had my own websites (written entirely in html!) and then somehow I found my way over to blogging. I really have no idea what caused me to go from a website to a blog.

 

When I started this blog, my travel blog Suitcase Scribbles was hosted on Posterous, which no longer exists. I never got any help with my problems from any online communities, because everyone was a WordPress snob (the name I had for them!) – if I posted that I had a problem, and then people found out I wasn’t on WordPress, no one was interested. Or I got (what I felt like was) attitude that you’re not “really” a blogger until you’re on WordPress. So I started a WordPress blog, just to learn how it works. Then I found the Australian blogging community on Twitter and as they say, the rest is history.

 

(While I’m happily on WordPress now, I still don’t see why you “have” to be on it. I see it’s benefits more now, but there are still plenty of options that may suit people better.)

Before Blogging: What Challenges Did You Overcome To Start Your Blog?

But I’m curious. Platforms aside, we all came to blogging one way or another. At some point, most people thought “Hey I might start a blog”! Then you probably did some blog reading, some searching about how to blog…

 

What I’m really curious about here is what thoughts you had before blogging – thoughts in the “Oh wow, I can’t blog because…” area. I’m totally data mining your brains here, FYI.

 

And I guess on that topic, you should know why! If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen this tweet two days ago:

 

I totally, FINALLY, just registered the URL for my new venture/rebrand. Can I get a yay!!! It’s been weeks of brainstorming!

— 26 Years & Counting (@26YearsCounting) April 22, 2014


I have been mulling and mulling and trying to work out for a long time now what to do with my business, Nutshell Training and Consulting. I wasn’t happy with how it was, it wasn’t successful…and recently it all clicked for me. I’ll be doing a similar type of business but very focused on a particular market and much less corporate-wankery like. So it’s kind of a rebrand because I’ll be using some work I had in the background for Nutshell, and kind of a new venture because how I’m approaching it is totally different. I don’t have a launch date yet, because I don’t even have a website yet! I’m taking my time and tweaking to make sure I develop a style that is both relevant and consistent for the business.

 

How does this relate to the question of “Oh wow, I can’t blog because…” ? Well, I’m in a huge content creation phase for my new business/baby and I want to be able to answer questions that really help people. So I’d like to be able to answer that question in a blog post, to help you and to help others who maybe had the same questions and hesitations as you did.

 

What does my new venture mean for this blog? Nothing. I still pour my brain out here in its own random and odd and normal ways. I still have an occasionally updated travel blog, purely because I just love having my own little corner of the internet to talk about the rare travel I get to do.

 

So tell me, what were your hesitations before you started blogging? Fill in the blank: “Oh wow, I can’t blog because…”

 

10 Replies to “Before Blogging”

  1. I’m a bit like you – I was posting stuff online years before there was a word for it – before I knew it, I was calling myself a blogger, mainly because that’s what everyone else was calling themselves, but I wasn’t doing anything different to before…

    To be honest, I’m less comfortable with the “blogger” tag than I used to be. I think of myself as a story-teller, and perhaps that’s what I am… A story-teller who posts things on a website – some of the stories are real, and some are made up – if you want to call that a blog, that’s fine – but I won’t. It’s just a website. They’re just stories.

    Also, I use Tumblr to host my website – it’s free and reliable and gives me everything I need to self-publish… so, as you say, there are alternatives to WP. 😉

    1. I think the title blogger has taken on its own meaning in recent years. Or there’s a dictionary meaning vs a social meaning to it.

  2. My journey has been a gradual evolution as I never really set out to start blogging. At the beginning of my journey to find ways to earn money online, I came to understand that there were all sorts of ways people were forging their very own careers by using the web and blogging stood out to me. During that period in time my problem was I didn’t believe I had a topic to write authoritatively about. In fact, I didn’t believe I was a strong writer at all. I was deep into the world of PPC money making and I was a frequent visitor at a popular work from home blog, and one of the tips I took from that experience was once you get good enough at something, show other people how to do it. My first blog was hosted by blogger, and it was a referral link heavy “how to” PPC site.

    I was avidly searching for ways I could earn money online, and this is when I came across this brand new site where you could sell services starting at a paltry $5, fiverr.com. I got pretty good at selling there and in the early years I launched a blog to showcase the work I was doing. I wasn’t very good at updating or marketing the site, but it provided me a platform where I got a ton of practice whilst building my fiverr venture up.

    It’s been 7 years since I started my first blog and since then I’ve registered and owned upward 50 websites for what I refer to now as (nothing more than) expensive practice. I now have 2 websites that are my sole focus from hence forth. I’ve grown at fiverr to great heights and I’ve used everything I’ve learned about the web, blogging, and design to build what I like to call my very own empire on the web. It has taken me the better part of a decade to start doing things right, but I’m fortunate for how I got here as missteps are an extreme rarity for me now, and I can unequivocally add blogger to my arsenal of entrepreneurial tools.

    1. I think that’s usually what makes bloggers more interesting – that it wasn’t their intention! Then again, blogging is still so new overall that very few people have had the opportunity to dream of being a blogger.

  3. As soon as I discovered blogs, I wanted in. I knew I could do it. My only hesitation was that Husband would laugh at me or think my idea of blogging stupid. One day after listening to my talking about all my thoughts on other blogs, he said why don’t I do that. I immediately jumped up and brought my domain name. My first blog post was published a couple of hours later.

    1. Nice! It’s wonderful to have the support of a partner in these things 🙂

  4. I didn’t think I had anything to write about and made excuses that I didn’t have time….plus the whole public stratosphere kinda freaked me out. Now I wish I had started sooner while the kids were little, so I would then have so much more recorded 🙂

    1. I don’t plan much content these days, so I’m constantly surprising myself when write 🙂

  5. I jumped in before I really knew what was involved in actually running a blog and learnt on the hop. It seemed I got bored at night(because that’s the time I had to myself) and nothing ever happened on FB late at night. I saw other blogs and thought, Oh, I’ll have a go at that. Now the only time I don’t blog is when life gets a bit busy, or if I need some down time.

    1. Night is always my blogging time too – I guess the fact I don’t watch much on TV is to thank for that!

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