Would you read your own blog?
April 10, 2007 | Comments (1) | Filed under: Blogging
I came across an interesting article over at Search Engine Journal today entitled, Would You read Your Own Blog. Since many of the readers here at Bookmark Bliss are new bloggers, I thought it was a worthwhile article to dive into a little deeper.
I think the author, Ahmed Bilal, makes some great points that any new blogger should analyze in his/her own work. It’s very easy for a new site to copy content from others and offer next to nothing in terms of originality. You could easily fill up hundreds of posts in this way, without breaking a sweat. It all comes down to this though, would you read a site like that if you happened across it while browsing the web?
The author of the article says 90% of blogs out there run sites the authors wouldn’t even read themselves. Maybe this post right here (not too original after all 
) just proves his point. While I agree with the author, I do think he takes a very narrow view of the blogosphere and doesn’t look at the issue from all angles.
Ultimately, you do need to consider your motivation behind wanting to blog. If you’re driven to crack the Technorati top 100 and become a force to reckon with on the World Wide Web, then you need to focus on whatever it takes to make a blog you would read, your parents would read, and your friends and family would read. I think this type of site is specifically what Mr. Bilal is thinking about when he wrote the article. There are, however, literally dozens of other motives behind starting a blog that I think this applies to much less.
What if your motivation behind your blog is making money online regardlesss of your reader base? I think I can safely say that you can do this very well simply by copying other people’s work and using social sites like Digg, Reddit, MySpace, etc to promote the hell out of everything you do.
I think the guideline of writing a blog even you would read is a great concept and every single person writing a blog today should take the advice to heart. I do, however, think that an unoriginal blog with content you wouldn’t read yourself, is not by any means the sign of an unsuccessful business opportunity. I can think of at least a dozen sites right now that make a fortune every single day and have thousands and thousands of subscribers, without writing content that provides a fresh opinion or a cutting edge observation.
At the end of the day, you have to go with your strengths. If your past experience or your writing ability are not enough to write a blog you would read, don’t let that stop you from getting your own piece of the Internet pie. Everyone else is doing it and I’ll tell you right now, not very many of them would pass Mr. Bilal’s test…
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I would definitely read what I write. There’s no point in blogging in so!, since my top most priority is not to derive money earnings from my readers. What I derive from are the smiles and comments they give from what they laugh at.