Simon’s Notes

I’m generally quite an avid reader of JohnChow.com and for the most part I agree with his point of view. Yesterday I was a reading a post where he talks about a new blog that he’s thinking of starting as a sort of personal challenge. John wants to start from scratch, without telling anyone about it, and he wants to see how fast he can make it successful. I think this is a great idea as a lot of new bloggers find themselves limited to reading some lengthy and jargon filled posts when they’re starting out, but all they really want is for someone to just show them the way, and once John reveals his blog he will also reveal his steps to success. So thats something to look forward to.

That aside, this is not what this post is about. In the post where John is explaining a bit about his new project, he says that he’s going to pick a somewhat less popular niche but one that he’s familiar with, which is fine, but then he goes on to say that he can’t understand why bloggers would start blogs on something like making money online if they’ve never made a cent. At first glance this might make some sense, even if it isn’t what you want to hear, but I have an objection.

Firstly, I’d like to clarify that I’m not writing this as a personal defense, I think its pretty obvious that my blog is about business & money, and not about making money online, even though I do write about it sometimes. I’m writing as a blogger that maybe has a different opinion to John as to what a blog truly is.

Blog is short for web log. My impression of a log has always been a sort of journal or a place where you record important information, like a ships log, or maybe a personal diet log. So to get straight to the point, if I wanted to make some money online I might consider starting a blog to be able to log my progress, and my experiences and lessons. Does that make sense? A blog is not a place to show off how much you know about something, it is foremost a personal log where you can share your experiences with others.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t blog about something you know, but more importantly you should blog about something that interests you. That, in my opinion is what will attract readers. I enjoy reading established blogs such as JohnChow, Problogger, and Shoemoney, but sometimes I get more satisfaction by reading the little blogs, or maybe the smaller blogs that are starting to have some success, because I can relate more to them.

If you had to be an expert in order to blog, then kiss goodbye to Simon’s Money Notes.

Simon

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Filed under: Blogging, Make Money Online by Simon Rodrigues