Charles Lau dot Com

Blogging is a unique flavor of website which is totally different from any other websites which provide articles. It contains a partial flavor of an article site, and yet it has the mixture flavor of a forum too. Whatever we are doing, we are constantly in touch with the outside world of what contents we have blogged.  Your contents will be discussed in the your comments, or even in other blogs.  A blogger is more like an individual newscaster than just an article contributor…

Don’t Start A Blog If

1. you are just using it like a normal article website.
2. you are not going to update it frequently.
3. you are not intending to work on it in the same quality and quantity as you have originally started.
4. you have no interest in the topic of your blog.

The Contents
The more contents you contribute, the more popularity you are going to attract due to the fact that we can see more about you.  It’s just like a person when you first see him.  If you see this person who is so quiet, you wouldn’t know what kind of person he is.  But if he is very noisy, you will start to understand more about him as he speaks out more words.  The more words a blogger says, the better the readers can understand him.  This brings us to the next topic “The Voice”.

The Voice
It’s like the voice of a blogger in pure words.  The more words you utter, the better your readers get to know you and become your loyal readers if they found you interesting.  But if you keep on copying and pasting articles which are not of your own, you might get into trouble trying to find more articles later… Your readers will never recognize your voice… And your learning curve will get worse over the period… Why?  Because we learn best when the words come from ourselves.  We tend to learn something better when we teach, not when we learn… And hence, you will not accumulate the power that you are supposed to get over the period of blogging.  This brings us to the next topic “The Power”.

The Power
As the traffic is accelerating, we are also becoming more powerful in our blog when we go through the process of blogging.  Your traffic is massive only because you have a familiar blogging voice that your readers know of.  I personally wouldn’t want to go back to that blog if the original blogger is no longer there… But if that really happens, I have to become familiar with his voice before I carry on with my blog visits.  With great power, comes great responsibility!  Let’s talk about “Responsibility” topic next.

The Responsibility
While we are still small and starting up our first blog, we have all the chances to make mistakes in our blog because our blogs are not yet fully exposed to the world.  But when your blog becomes fully exposed to the world, you better have a better capability of handling the kind of traffic is coming in!  And when anything happens, take fullest responsibility to find out why and how.  Things such as your monthly income from the blog is dropping… Your traffic is not improving over the period… Your blog frequency is no longer there… Your blog quality is getting worse… etc…

Start a blog if

1. you have a great interest in the topic of your blog.
2. you are willing to do it like a hobby.
3. you wish to learn more about a certain topic now and in future.
4. you are willing to take the time to write your very original postings.

Conclusion
It seems to be the common thing that professional bloggers tend to make a lot of money out of their blogs.  And interestingly, the way they make their money is very real and long term.  And professional bloggers seem to be more “real” than the Internet Marketers out there who are posing themselves as experts to the public.  But no matter what, if your website doesn’t reflect well in its design structure and contents, the likelihood of conversion will drop dramatically… First impression do counts…