Article provided by Nia Sowden, author of Survival Wytch

Why I became a blogger, why I like blogging, why I don’t like blogging

I love blogging. I was introduced to blogging by my mother who is a seasoned writer, traveler and all-round consumer. Her blogs are about shopping and traveling and movie reviews and crazy happenings in the world.

Mum and her best friend are delving right into the ‘webs’ belly’ and reaping the benefits of running an online business and community connections that are still only a mystery to me as I’m fairly new to blogging.

I began with a blog at Blogger.com. But there are lots of other places to start including WordPress.com

By joining communities at mybloglog.com and Spicypage, you get to read the blogs of others who like the same things as you do.

Becoming a member of other communities and posting comments on other blogs, posting discussions in forums, joining groups and branching out into an exiting web of over 96 million other bloggers from all over the world, you can really discover how amazing the internet is.

I use my blog to tell my friends what I am doing and what life is like in a new city. It is cheaper to have an online diary or blog than to write letters or phone everyone, so I keep up with news about family members and their friends and anyone can read it.

 Reading blogs is both informative and entertaining

 I read blogs to get opinions from blog owners and to be entertained

When researching a topic you will undoubtedly end up on a blog, which is great, because blogs provide both facts and personal experiences of an event or an interesting article or review of a consumer product or a time in history, anything at all.

There are even blogs about blogs and blogging, the ‘how to’s and ‘do’s and don’ts’ of successful blogging.

Some are really funny. I love reading opinions and experiences. I love the poetry and the pictures of people’s personal albums. I access blogs for information about cooking, art, sports, music, travel, collecting, personal blogs to catch up with a favorite blogger, blogs by specialists about specialist subjects, and blogs about politics by bloggers, by political commentators, journalists and the Politicians themselves.

There are blogs to benchmark a business, and chart success or share ideas in a blogger business community, marketing blogs, blogs with Adsense ads to help the blogs’ owner create an income stream from their blogs as well as the content on their marketing page.

Among my particular favorites are blogs where you can buy stuff. I love buying stuff.

So what to blog about?

Just type into a search engine what you like, a favorite topic, and see who writes about it.
Read their information, opinion, the comments of others, if you like what you read, create a blog, leave a comment and/or join their community. Or just start out with a personal journey and let the blog develop. As you become more experienced your blog will change course as so many do.

Being a blogger has been a real learning curve

First thing is to establish the type of blog to maintain.

This is important, ramblings don’t make for good readability so having a topic to discuss, or a collection of topics to discuss is the key, not too many ideas in one post.

A post that rambles is boring. Revisit your blog often and post something every couple of days. Current information is really important for community members to see that you are still active. Once you get going you’ll get readers and visitors who pop by and post comments.

It is really uplifting to know that someone out there in blogger land has read your post and liked it. It gives you a platform that has the potential to be read by millions of bloggers.

I like writing and telling people about life on our vineyard. This captures the imagination when you hear the words ‘life on a vineyard’.

Living in a rural area is something so few people get to experience. My life is interesting and the everyday stories are funny so why not record them and introduce others to my life?

But hang on, I cook too, Ill have a blog about cooking, My children are hilarious and their growing pains ought to be recorded so I’ll blog about them, I love Dr who and science fiction, I suppose I can even have a blog about all things Sci-fi?

I began with posting “20 posts in 90 days, joined Pay Per Post and now enjoy being a published postie.

It wasn’t that long ago that I had never even seen a blog and now I have my own blogs and am encountering whole communities of bloggers with fantastic stories and information to share.

I just wish I had more time in the day to read everything I want to or reply to my visitors.

Happy blogging!