The NBI And Starting A Blog

Two weeks into May, and after posting a talkback post, I realized that I hadn’t even mentioned The Newbie Blogger Initiative (NBI). This is a good indication of how bad my blogging has been lately. But enough about me.

NBI is a very cool effort to promote new blogs and to spread the word that now is a great time to start a blog if you’ve been thinking about doing so. NBI is generally focused on gaming blogs but nobody is going to stop you from starting a non-gaming blog, too.

Good reasons to start a blog:

• You like to write or you want to get better at writing.
• You have something to say but nobody will listen.
• You want to join a loose community of crazy blogger people.
• You want to learn more about web publishing.
• You have some knowledge or experience that could benefit others.

Bad reasons to start a blog:

• You want to make a lot of money.
• You want to make a little bit of money.
• You want to make even a single cent of money. (Insert your local country’s smallest denomination of currency there.)

I’m not saying it’s impossible to make money by blogging. I’m just saying that “content marketing” is a huge commitment and unless you’re a robot, or quite lucky, or you started your blog ten years ago, your time would probably be better spent on other ways to make money. Perhaps self-publishing an ebook. (Your chances of making money there are small, too, but I would say slightly better.)

The point is that most bloggers blog simply because they love to blog. Starting a blog is intimidating at first-not knowing if you picked the right name, not knowing if anyone will read your posts, not knowing if your RSS feeds are working, not knowing how to insert pictures or fiddle with widgets or customize the CSS or whatever. But over time it gets easier, and you’ll start to find a voice and a rhythm that works for you.

Then, if you’re like me and I’m sure most other bloggers, you’ll eventually lose your voice and your rhythm again and have to re-discover it over and over again. Because blogging, like writing itself, is not always easy. But it’s very rewarding to be able to look back over your body of blogging work as it grows month after month and year after year and say, “Hey, neat, I did that.”

Party Business and Bio Break both have far better lists of the NBI participants than I could do, and of course the NBI site has tons and tons of blogging information.

Welcome and good luck to everyone starting or re-starting a blog this month!