Why blog? 30 reasons to start a blog

Whatever we do, there is always a reason why we do what we do. In blogging that happens to be the case as well. People start blogs for different reasons. Spent sometime writing this – would have come up with a list of 10 or 15 reasons, but what I ended up creating is this massive post: Why blog? 30 reasons to start a blog.

Read on to see if your reasons for wanting to start your own blog are listed below. Get inspired going through the list below and pick a few things to start implementing right away when you launch your site. The post will answer questions such as why blog, why start a blog – personal blog, niche site or business blog – and much more.

1. Start a blog to connect with people who share in the same ideas you espouse

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If you ever wanted to connect with people who share in ideas similar to yours, there are many ways to do it – and many platforms, websites and groups (online and offline) that make it easy for you to do this.

 Note: This post may contain affiliate links. When you click on something I recommend and purchase it, I will receive a commission for the sale – at no extra cost to you. 
30 reasons to start a blog - read this post on why you should be blogging
By: Christian Schnettelker

You can start a blog for this – and build a community around the ideas, topics or hobbies you cover on the blog posts you publish to your blog.

Your blog can be a place where people interested in the same topics or ideas can come together to share their ideas, expand on different topics (ideas), share experiences (and real stories of struggle and achievement), share systems and processes and most important of all, help each other.

On the same note, you can go a step further and allow people with contrary ideas (and opinions) to contribute to the discussions via your blog’s comment section.

Listening to them can help you see things from their perspective and use any observations you make to expand on your own ideas and use anything good you gain from such interactions to improve your own ideas, take on certain topics and how to interact with the other guys with ideas and opinions contrary to yours.

With all the ideas streaming in your blog, you can then turn them into free or paid ebooks, online courses or different services and products (physical and digital).

And remember all these things you create can be made better as you work on developing your ideas further – and the refined versions and editions released to the market for other people to enjoy as well – for free or at a fee.

2. Start a blog to learn about your industry (niche)

There is only so much you can learn when you are outside looking in (a niche or industry) trying to glean insights on various aspects of a niche you are interested in.

In this case, you are not deeply involved in the niche.

Your curiosity at this point can only afford you the title: researcher.

You are outside looking in, hoping to learn more (quickly).

With a blog, you can involve yourself a little deeper in any given niche or industry.

How?

Say, you have registered a domain name, paid for web hosting,  installed and setup WordPress, the necessary plugins and themes, installed analytics (like Google Analytics and Jetpack Site Stats), came up with a posting schedule (and actually published some articles – like ten or twenty for a start) you are now ready to learn more about your niche in more ways than you ever could just browsing the internet as a person outside looking in.

When you do the above, you will, after some time, have access to more information about the niche:

  • by checking your analytics (incoming searches, referrers, time on site, age, location, device used, operating system, type of browser etc.)
  • know about the merchants, customers and clients in the niche through the questions they ask via email, telephone, text messages, live chat, comments, social networks, forums or in person. You will be in a whole new level – getting to interact with the people that are part of the niche or industry you are interested in.

You can even bring in more traffic by paying for website clicks (and using remarketing or retargeting) to get more people to your blog just so you can get more data to work with.

3. Start a blog to make money which you can use as capital to start a business or something else

It’s possible to start a blog cheaply, make money off it and use that as capital to start another business (or organization or school) with a physical location or online.

However, this is not for people who will write one to five blog posts and wonder why their site is not getting traffic from search engines and social media (and why nobody is clicking on their affiliate links or ads by their ad network of choice) – then give up.

If this is your reason to start a blog, you are going to have to put in a lot of effort and throw any speck of entitlement (from search engines, readers, ad networks and affiliate networks) out of the window.

You are going to have to go beyond expecting everything for free and put in some money to get traffic to your landing pages, services and products sales pages, articles, videos etc.

Patience is also going to be key!

All in all, you can spend less than 100 US Dollars to start your blog and earn thousands of dollars in profits down the road – money which you can then use to start a business or any other thing you fancy – like investing the money you make – planting more seeds that will earn you more through compounding.

4. Start a blog to promote your services (and get leads)

Blogging can be a cheap way to let more (of the right) people know more about your existence, your name, your business and the services you offer – and why they should work with you when there are already thousands of other people already offering something similar to the one you have brought to market.

For example, I do offer freelance writing as a service on Niabusiness.com (this blog you are reading now).

I could have just created one page with a title like (Services, Hire Me or Hire Us), sprinkled it with a few details about how a client can go about hiring me to write for them and called it a day.

Or create more detailed pages about the writing service – thinking of questions a potential client may have and answering them in advance.

So, at the end of the day, I end up with 30 to 50 detailed articles about every aspect of this one service I’m offering.

This results in more indexed pages.

More pages ranking for ‘freelance writer for hire’ type keywords.

More doors (pages) for searchers can go through to find me.

More leads and detailed answers to reduce the back and forth before I land a new client ready to take advantage of my writing services.

At the end of the day, I get more leads and clients paying for my writing service just because of thinking about them and the information they may need before they hire me.

One could argue that all this could be achieved using just the one Hire Me page, but believe me when I say that going into detail and letting the client (prospect) in on the service (and every aspect including my rates) plays a big role in moving them from just a searcher that lands on Niabusiness.com to someone who hires me and pays me well for my services.

You can start a blog and use it to promote your services, expand on your frequently asked (answered) questions by answering most of the questions in detailed blog posts of their own.

5. Start a blog to receive payments on your online shop

There are many ways to do this. You can do this with a service you offer. An example is the freelance writing service example I’ve shown you above.

With WordPress coming with various robust ecommerce plugins, you can easily add an online store to your blog (using plugins like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads or self-hosted shopping cart software that you can embed on your site like Ecwid or Gumroad) and receive payments without your readers leaving your site – except may be when finalizing payment with payment processors like PayPal, Stripe or Skrill.

Here you simply get people to your blog (free organic traffic from search engines after publishing articles to your blog or paid traffic) and then sell them something – a service or product. For example, used cars, ebooks (guides), a software (app, addon or extension) you had some developer create for you, a checklist, products you source from say China (Kenya, Taiwan, India, Japan, US, UK etc.) and ship to your country, coaching or consulting.

Most readers will readily welcome services and products on your own blog – than if you were to redirect them to another website for the same, though this is not always the case as attested by the hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars earned by various site owners using ads and affiliate marketing as a monetization strategy.

6. Start a blog to promote a book or ebook

It can be your ebook (book) or someone else’s.

Think about all the great books you’ve read in your life – that you’d gladly recommend to others – not once by sending them an email telling them how great the book is – but having one place (the blog you start) where you review the books you’ve read in detailed – so that people searching through search engines can easily find them.

And when writing the emails (or messages) recommending a book to your friend or family member – you can simply link to your blog (specifically the post with more information on the book you are recommending) and tell them to follow the link to learn more.

Of course, when they land on the page, they should also find information on how to get a copy of the said book.

If it is your own, link to a page where they can quickly checkout and get their copy shipped to them (or where they can download the book in digital format).

If the book isn’t yours you can link to it on stores like Amazon using your affiliate link and earn commissions whenever someone clicks through and decides to make a purchase on Amazon (or any other online store you link to).

To add more meat to your recommendations, you can occasionally publish articles that delve deeper into the main topics covered in the books you recommend.

Found recent news related to the topics in the ebooks you recommend? Blog about it and link to your recommendations page from this new post.

Find the life of a certain author fascinating? Write your own profile of him and link to the posts where you have reviewed some of his books.

Want to turn certain parts of passages (in a collection of books you have read) into quotes? Go ahead, create a list post of related quotes from different books and link to your review posts from this new article you publish.

7. Start a blog to get investors to invest their money in your project

Say, you don’t have enough money for a big goal you have in mind – like creating a product or service that may cost thousands or millions of dollars you may not have right now – you can scale down the idea and just start with the little capital you have.

There are many ways to do this. Blogging is one of those ways.

You can start a successful blog – and use it to get investors – where people, with their own money, who come into contact with you through the blog you create, decide to invest in your ideas, products and services.

To do this, you will have to create a series of posts about who you are, what you do, where you are now (in terms of growth, patents, system, processes, product development, short and long term goals, sales, costs, profits) and where you want to be in the future.

In these articles, you will have to go into detail on the kind of help you need to reach your goals – and also be clear about whatever it is you are offering to whoever decides to invest their money in you.

You must also be clear about who you want to invest in you – and be very selective before any new contract is created between you and the party you decide to work with (also smart to involve a lawyer or attorney).

Be clear about what you are looking for.

Let potential investors know about their obligations for the period they work with you (and after that as well).

Be clear about what they get for investing their money in you (equity in your company, royalties, interest on their money, duration it takes for them to get their money back) including the necessary steps you follow in case the investment turns out to be a bad one (a position you are going to put a lot of effort to avoid!)

Also put in place a simple contact form on the articles where interested investors can submit their information – so you can engage them some more via phone or email about the finer details of the investment (and answer any personal questions they may have regarding this deal).

Why the contact form? To separate those who are serious about working with you from the people that may just engage you in back and forth emails wasting your time before fading into thin air.

To be successful at this, make sure you have a registered business and have a physical location the investor can easily reach you.

Also be truthful and reasonable in your estimations avoiding declarations that are purely inspired more by excitement about what you are doing (and what you want to achieve in a given period of time) than real numbers backed by a determination to work hard to achieve (or even over-achieve) your targets and keep everyone happy – you, your users (readers) and the investors that trust you with their money (and your ability to grow it = ROI).

A very important thing to note is that, this can be easily done by targeting your message (and desire to get investment money) to the people already reading your blog and even reading your emails (subscribers).

See also  Marcus Sheridan of TheSalesLion.com: An interview on content marketing and how to start a successful blog

So, start with those first: the people who come to the blog you start – or the ones that decide to connect with you on various social networking sites.

You can also put forth different figures you have in mind to ensure you don’t lock out any potential investor from entrusting you with their money to further your ideas, grow your business, improve a service or refine a process (system).

So, you can offer various options to people interested in investing their money in you.

You can have an option for $1000, $5000, $10000, $20000, $50000, $500000, $1000000, $100000000 or any amount you have in mind. Of course valuations are also very important when arriving at these numbers. So, put aside a little bit of your time to do the math.

Remember that investors are interested in how they are going to get their money back (besides their return on investment).

Work those figures out.

Then go out start your blog and get your investors.

If you get many related questions from your potential investors, turn them into a FAQ (frequently asked/answered questions) and have them in a page (on your blog) that others interested in working with you, by investing their money, can easily access them.

 

8. Start a blog to critic, review and recommend different products and services

How do you do this?

First, let’s start with why you should do it.

Say, for example, you have used various products or services in a given category (blenders, for example) – and having had different experiences using the various blenders in the market with regards to say, brand, capacity, noise levels, power consumption, speed, durability and cost – you can write reviews of each blender you have bought and used (may be it wasn’t even yours – you used it when you paid a visit to a friend, relative, sibling, parent etc.) sharing your experiences using each one of them, mentioning their features and specifications then recommending the ones one should invest their money in depending on: how much they have, brand, durability among any other worthy criteria.

Each blender can have its own post. Then you can go ahead and create lists such as 25 best blenders under 200 US dollars in 2019 or simply title the post, 25 best blenders 2019.

You can do this with furniture, washing machines, toasters, cars, smartphones, watches, clothes, apps or any other product or service you have used.

Just walk in every room in the house or office you are in for ideas.

There are plenty of ideas for things you can review on a new blog you start.

Also make sure to check your receipts – physical and the digital ones sent to your email’s inbox (or phone’s text message inbox) for even more ideas.

The main reason why you should do a review of products or services in a category you are familiar with is to help other buyers hear (and access credible reviews) from individuals who have had experience with the products or services they are considering spending money on.

It is a great way to help others make a great buying decision.

Coupled with affiliate links to stores where your blog readers can quickly order the products you recommend, your blog can also start making money – which you can then use to spend on more products in the category of your interest to have more stuff you can review.

You can also use the money you make to get more people to your blog via paid methods from wherever they usually hang out – like some of the popular social networks and messaging apps – and sell them your own guides on the items you review.

You can also email manufacturers to send you various products for review purposes – items which you can then send back to them once you are done creating and publishing your reviews.

If they let you keep the product, that’s great too. You can keep it or give it away to your readers, friends or family. Or sell it.

How do you do this? Find products or services you already use – some that you have bought and are using in your own home.

Since you have a good understanding of them compared to someone who haven’t used them (the buyers doing their research before they part with any of their money), write about what you love or don’t like about the products.

Mention how you get the maximum use from the products.

Mention things potential things to look out for.

Mention how to take care of the product.

Mention the ideal conditions for use if one wants to get the maximum benefit for the funds used in purchasing the product.

And then don’t forget to mention to recommend the product or service (mention the person you recommend it to and why. Also mention the right situation or circumstance buying the said product or service would be ideal).

Publish all this information as blog posts.

In the posts, you can include text, images, videos, tables (comparing different or almost similar products) and finish by telling the readers how to proceed (how to buy online or offline, where to find great deals and of course your affiliate link where appropriate).

9. Start a blog that acts as a customer care agent (support) available 24/7 by answering frequently asked questions

This is one of the best ways to use a blog – for those of you looking forward to starting your own blogs.

It’s true that most websites have a FAQ pages somewhere on their site – which is better than having none.

However, you can go into greater detail answering the questions on your site’s FAQ page by taking each question and turning them into blog posts – detailed ones – with text, audio, screenshots, slides, video, infographics, comparison tables, free ebook lead magnet or any kind of giveaway.

It’s more like the freelance writing service example I shared above.

You envision the questions that might come from clients, prospects and customers in your niche and answer each one of them in great detail in blog posts that you then publish on your blog and link to from your main FAQ page.

On the same note, every question that comes your way concerning you, your products, services, company, processes or story are also given their own blog posts where appropriate.

The most important thing to do is to be in-depth and detailed as possible.

So, next time you encounter a question you have already answered in one of your blog posts from a prospect or client, you simply give them the link where they can easily find the answer they need.

Even when you are away or asleep, the people who visit your website or blog will easily find what they are looking for when they visit your main FAQ page or use your site’s search feature.

Do this often with most (or all) questions you receive and soon your new blog will become a customer care agent available twenty four seven to any person with internet access no matter which part of the world they may be at the moment they come to your site.

10. Start a blog to make it easy for people to find you online on search engines

The reasons people want to be found online are many.

Fame and curiosity are some of the reasons.

But here I’m specifically thinking about something tangible that may entice people to go online and search for you – or anyone with your qualifications or characteristics.

Using the freelance writing service example again, it goes without saying that I want to be found in the search engines for freelance writer for hire type keywords.

I want people with internet access looking for a freelance writer they can hire to find me and give me their business. But so do many others.

I can rely on freelance marketplace websites like Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, iWriter or classified ads sites – and actually be found easily by anyone using search engines to find a freelance writer they can hire.

But these places are saturated with many competing freelancers – and besides we, freelancers, don’t own the sites and don’t have much say about ranking our pages on the sites.

So, I can still use these sites but also start my own blog, where I can rank pages related to the service I offer.

It may take awhile before they rank at the top of the search engine pages – but they do eventually.  And what a good thing (investment) that is when the articles are ranking well.

People searching for freelance writers they can hire can now find me through one of my article ranking for terms they searched for.

My pages on the third party sites may also be ranking – and some searchers may come across them.

You see, the reason you should start a blog to be found easily on search engines is so that you can have your own site that you can refine and improve to rank highly for the keywords you want searchers to find you with.

Having your own blog increases your likelihood of being found by searchers compared to relying only on sites you don’t own.

Other things you can do on your blog include keeping your visitors engaged by sharing your portfolio (like designers, photographers and developers), your story, your CV (resume) or your personality (shining through your writing and any other content you create: videos, audio, images etc.).

You can rank your name by creating a page with your first and last name as the title – and push it up the search engine pages through incoming backlinks, interlinking and creating more pages around your name and what you do.

This is even more significant if you have other people’s name coming up whenever you search for your name (or a combination of your name and any word you want to rank for) using any of the popular search engines.

11. Start a blog to own your digital land – and free yourself from the danger that is digital sharecropping

Sharecropping is where a tenant is allowed to use land by the owner and in return the landowner gets a share of the crops produced by the tenant from the land apportioned to them.

On the internet, sharecropping, is where you find businesses and individuals investing a lot of their sweat on other people’s websites (instead of their own) – for activities that lead to more business – leads, engagement, social proof, customer support, and more sales.

Soon, sometimes because of the popularity of such sites (given how many users they have), people come to depend on the sites to give them more of what they want (sales, leads and engagement) in return for producing content for the sites (user generated content – UGC), seeing ads, giving more of their information away – data which is used in various ways to profit the owners of the sites.

So, it looks like a give and take relationship. There is an element of fairness.

That is until the tenant (users of such sites) realize that the owner (or admin) of the site has an upper hand – since he owns the site and can do whatever he pleases – like deactivating a user’s account or shutting down a page a business has come to depend on for web traffic and sales.

Same can be said of search engines with their constant tweaking of their algorithms that sometimes lead to a dip in incoming traffic to a blog or website of owners who have become too dependent on the search engines to keep sending readers and customers their way – not realizing the search engines can decide any time to divert that traffic elsewhere.

You see the danger there?

As Nicholas Carr – who came up with the term digital sharecropping – you can see that the means of production (e.g. all the content you create and upload or publish to these sites) is placed on the hands of the masses – which seems like a great thing.

However, the few websites that dominate the internet (few hands making handsome profit from the free labour) withhold from the same masses ownership over the product of their work.

You can start your blog and massively take action to build it into a valuable resource that helps you and your visitors achieve the goals you have.

Why is this important? Because some of these sites people come to depend on a lot for their traffic and sales are like any other business.

Some thrive then die – and with them your expectations of sending you traffic and sales on a daily basis.

Some just get old and people run away from them.

Some are sold to new owners – who at times are indifferent to your expectations and not quite as tolerant and generous as previous owners.

Some just stop being innovative and then new players come on the scene – and the once popular sites just fade away like that.

Some are killed by their owners or new owners.

And most of the times users have no say!

So, instead of concentrating most of your content creation and publishing on some of these popular sites (which results in their value and profits always increasing) you can start your own successful blog – and bring people there.

Don’t depend on the ease and comfort you get from the tools made available to you by these sites.

Use them, yes. But concentrate on your own website (blog) where you rule and do have a say unlike say Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, YouTube or even Google (and other popular sites you have come to depend on – way too much).

Bring the games home. Let people travel to you (your blog). Play. Win.

12. Start a blog to grow a platform where others can also share their writing and ideas

You can start a blog that acts as a platform where others can share their content in the form of guest contributions for example.

It’s funny how I mention this after making your levels of disdain for the big sites to up a little.

May be I am teaching you to be a generous landowner that many tenants will love working with.

You can grow your new blog to a level where you start getting emails from people who want to contribute useful and valuable content to your blog.

In the blogging world, the common terms for this are: guest posts or guest blogging – usually text and some graphics.

But WordPress, if you choose to run your blog using this script, is so robust you can use it to build a community – using BuddyPress – and make it easy for people to sign up (register) and upload all kinds of contents in formats they want.

With great content from your blog’s users (readers) you can quickly grow your site’s traffic – add a marketplace (and earn commissions of each sale that takes place), add a classified ads section (and earn from featured listings), add a forum (and increase time on site and pageviews) … so many things you can do.

If you are the only person publishing content on your blog (blogging solo as opposed to having a team of writers) and you post three pieces of content per week – that is 3 articles a week (12 posts per month or 144 posts in one year).

Now say, you can increase that number – and publish 3 quality articles on your blog each day. That comes to 21 new posts per week (or 84 posts per month which results in 1008 published articles per year).

Most blogs don’t publish this often.

If the contributions to your platform makes it easy to increase your posting frequency without the quality of the published content suffering – that’s a great thing – something you should not shy away from implementing.

Most popular blogs in the world today have become platforms publishing a lot of content (in the tens, hundreds and thousands of articles) every day.

They are no longer just blogs but platforms many people actually want to contribute to.

They have become very selective in the kinds of content they publish and most people who want to contribute to some of these websites are forced to spend a few hours creating just one piece of content that may either be accepted or attract a rejection.

13. Start a blog to interview people – and share their stories

In a post I published on Niabusiness.com blog awhile ago (10 ways for new bloggers to get more people to come to their blogs), I mentioned doing interviews as one of the best ways new bloggers can use to quickly grow their blog – and fill it with valuable content.

You can start a new blog and publish email interviews or podcasts (audio and video interviews) with a transcript for each episode.

You can always hire a transcriptionist to turn your audio or video to text which is then made available to your blog’s audience as a PDF download alongside the MP3 or MP4 (or any other format you use for your audio and videos).

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You can email people in a certain niche by asking them questions and sharing your responses via your blog.

For example if you are interviewing online business owners working from home, you can ask them about their life (growing  up, college, hobbies, interests, beliefs, experiences), how, why, where and when they got started with online business, their observations, their advice for beginners, their success tips, how they deal with procrastination, what others should focus on when building a business on the internet, their numbers and what stats one should focus on when testing things or checking their analytics tools, how they get customers and close sales, challenges they’ve experienced and overcame, great resources they’d recommend to others, what their business is all about – and why people come to them, or how the relationship between them and their customers has been from day one among many other questions you might think of.

The key is to get detailed responses from whoever you interview – so that when you finally publish the interview on your blog, anyone who comes across it leaves having learned something useful they can implement to better their own lives (business) and other people’s lives.

Craft your questions in a way that encourages responses that offer solutions to problems others may be experiencing in your given niche or industry.

14. Start a blog to test your endurance level and ability to learn quickly and implement well what you learn

Have you seen how many bloggers complain about how a tip or strategy they learned from a certain internet marketer doesn’t work?

Of course you have if you’ve spent a considerable amount of time checking the kinds of comments people leave in forums and various blogs.

People want it easy, but blogging and making money online is actually hard work.

And hard work calls for endurance and the ability to learn quickly, implement what you learn, analyze what works or doesn’t (use any of the paid or free analytics software) and adjusting accordingly.

Now, you can start a brand new blog – and see if you can rise from your comfort zone (to stay away from complaining and shifting blame) and simply choose to put in the hard work – learning, implementing, analyzing your results and adjusting what you focus on to grow your site (which in most cases involves learning from the successful sites, creating lots of great content on your topic and promoting it).

People read how some of the successful bloggers around toiled in the beginning – sometimes publishing between 3 to 30 articles a day but they don’t learn from that.

Why? It’s a lot of work.

Or they get the idea from some other bloggers that encourage epic posts less frequently (not realizing that some of these so-called epic posts have word count in the thousands. Sometimes like short posts in a series rolled into one.).

So, even those who publish less frequently still put in a lot of effort in their 2 to 3 posts per week (per month) schedule.

There’s no running from the hard work.

Why do many resist it then? Why do people just complain and look for quick gimmicks to inflate their stats – when they can just as easily sit down and create lots of great and valuable content.

Why do many bloggers listen to the top bloggers speak on the secrets and right way to blog – when they can simply focus on their work (and pay little attention to the distractions out there), interpret well whatever their analytics is telling them (what’s working and what doesn’t) and adjust accordingly?

After all most successful bloggers have contradicting advice on how to start and grow a blog – but most of them do agree on two things: creating great content (however they define it) and putting it in front of the right people.

So, you can start a new blog – to test your endurance – to test your courage; to see, if you can rise from laziness and procrastination to become a prolific blogger.

You can start a blog, work hard at it for at least 12 to 18 months, and test your ability to deal with stress and frustration.

Your new blog can help you come up with great strategies to build something amazing from scratch.

On top of that, your ability to quickly rise from mistakes will get better the more serious you get working on your project (your blog).

15. Start a blog because it’s even cheaper to start one now

The prices for web hosting and domain registration have significantly gone down over the years as more web hosting companies try hard to win more of the increasing number of people taking the plunge to create their own blogs.

Even if you are going to be that guy or girl that publishes new posts once or twice a week (and pay for your hosting plan annually) you will have accumulated between 52 and 104 published articles by the end of the year.

It doesn’t look much.

But when you publish valuable content – and decide to sell a product (offer a service) of your own (or one which you promote as an affiliate), it’s likely that the blog will start paying for itself.

You won’t have worries about forking money out of your wallet (purse, debit or credit card) to pay for hosting and domain renewal in year two onwards.

Plus the blog can start making you some side income which you can decide to save, invest or use to outsource content creation to a freelance writer whenever you are busy.

When your new blog brings you, say a conservative figure like a hundred dollars a month – which you save or invest – by the end of the year you can easily double, triple or even quadruple that amount – and keep growing.

You can use this money to pay your small loans or chip away on your debts.

You can use it to pay for great courses, books (like some of Jay Abraham’s books), coaching or consulting that result in a greater increase in the value of your life and that of your family.

You can use the money to buy other websites – and hire a virtual assistant to help you run them.

And of course, during the period you run your blog, you can meet some great people – just because you decided to take the leap to start a blog – and build your email list.

If you are tired running the blog, you can sell it in marketplaces like Flippa or Empire Flippers, among many others.

For investing less than US$100 a year on a new domain name and a web hosting plan and putting in a little time everyday (e.g one hour Monday to Saturday = 6 hours a week which in turn comes to 312 hours a year – a mere 13 days out of 365 days) to writing in-depth posts, you can build a great blog.

Start your blog, come up with a plan and stick to it.

The returns, if you execute your plan well, can be tremendous.

16. Start a blog and later turn the posts into an ebook, book, online course, meetup or conference

You can start a blog today on a given topic and nurture it – growing your audience from one to hundreds, thousands or millions.

The more articles you publish the deeper you’ll be delving in your topic – answering questions and creating posts addressing the concerns your audience have.

As your readership grows so will be your subscribers – and valuable data that you can use to grow bigger as fast as reasonably possible depending on the number of resources currently at your disposal (or those you seek later on as circumstances may dictate).

You can then, having gone through all the posts you have published, comments, emails, questions, search terms and all the data in your analytics, write and publish a book or ebook (or create an online course) on a specific issue related to the topic you cover on your blog.

Offer your expert advice in the material you publish. Solve problems. Help your readers move from where they are to where they want to be. Give them what they want – and are willing to pay for. Or give away the material for free.

Your new blog can inspire you to write one or several books similar to the content you have on your site, but you don’t have to stop there.

You can go ahead and start meeting with your readers offline in mini-meet-up sessions (in a village, town or city) or full blown conferences (with keynote speakers and all) – and even share bits of those sessions in webinars – so that those who are not able to come meet offline can also experience a bit of you and the other readers brought together through your blog.

17. Start a blog to introduce, promote and sell your online course

Having created an online course hosted on another website, like Udemy, or made available on a membership site or your own WordPress blog using WooCommerce (Easy Digital Downloads) ecommerce plugins with extensions like Sensei or WP Courseware, you can publish some 10 to 200 posts with content related to what you cover in the e-course – linking back to the course sign up page from each one of these posts to boost enrollment.

In these articles, you can also share a giveaway. If a person is interested in getting it, they can just optin via email, click the confirmation link in the email you send them and start pushing to their inbox a series of tips, stories and case studies related to your course using the autoresponder feature in your email marketing software of choice.

In these emails (or in one or two of them) you can then sell them on your course and invite them to come over to your blog – to sign up for the course.

Also you can buy traffic and send people to some of these posts (and not only buy traffic to your main course’s sign up landing page) to see which ones convert well.

You can then adjust accordingly – test different variations of copy, link text, giveaways, graphics, add-ons to improve your conversion rates.

18. Start a blog to build a brand (not just a business)

There are a lot of businesses online and offline. Businesses similar in many ways: voice, products, services, pricing, promises, customer experience, approach to customer acquisition and retention, interaction with competition and non-competing businesses in and outside their niche (industry) etc.

Too many are just forgettable – and they don’t even try that hard to make a great impression (and be remembered for their good treatment of clients and customers).

Some look just the same. Generic on the outside – and it’s just because they don’t capitalize on the things they already have, like their journey (and story) since inception.

Business owners get busy with the daily activities of running and managing a business that soon everything becomes a routine.

And once everything becomes routine a sort of comfort sweeps over everything they do sometimes to the extent where they are blinded and unable to put in real work to realize some of the noble goals they have in mind.

But putting in the effort to be remembered (in a good way) doesn’t mean only spending thousands or millions of dollars (Kenyan Shillings or any other currency) every month on TV, radio, newspapers, shows and magazines burning your logo and message in the minds of consumers.

You can do it cheaply using a blog. And not just by going on and on about your products and services on every article your company publishes – if at all you have already embraced business blogging.

You can share your story (everyone’s story – from the founder, CEO, manager and the rest of the team), your systems and processes (in an enjoyable way and to a reasonable degree), your goals, full blown case studies on customers who have used your products or services (not just two paragraph testimonials), immersive tutorials (with text, videos, audio, graphics etc.), offer quick and very reliable support and most of all be someone prospects and customers can easily trust to help them whenever they are stuck.

You can use your blog to do all this. To be involved even more in making the lives of your customers better. To be the good neighbor. To be that person they are pleased to meet every time knowing you will do everything to make sure they are treated well – and given what they want – putting their needs first before your agenda to make more.

That’s how people remember you and come to you when they know they can get help from you.

You can easily start a blog and use it to reinforce in the minds of consumers what you are known for (or what you want to be known for).

Your reputation. Your drive. Your purpose. Your guaranteed results.

The more you do this (involving your team and being creative and consistent in your approach) the more your brand will grow and the more people will be thankful for your (business) existence by spreading word about you (and recommending your products and service) or becoming a client  – consistently buying from you – and referring those close to them to work with you.

19. Start a blog to teach – spread knowledge and wisdom

There are many ways to generously share what you know (on a given topic) with others who want to learn.

For example you can speak with someone face to face.

Or chat online.

Or speak on the phone.

You can publish a manual, guide, book, ebook or course.

And that is all good.

Most people I know just share their knowledge with the people around them – some only when prompted.

But all the questions you get every day in an area that you are good at (and considered to be an expert in even if only by your family and a few friends or colleagues in the real world) can be the foundation for a new blog.

You can start a blog – and increase your reach. Sharing freely your knowledge in the form of blog posts online so that anyone with internet access can learn from you and implement what they’ve learnt.

Sometimes we also tend to focus deeply on a given topic for a period of time (like a few months) then switch focus and with that start forgetting all the great tips, tricks and strategies we learned by trial and error and hours upon hours of dedication to get better at something.

This is true for new skills, gadgets, devices, software, games or even subjects at school.

Instead of letting your knowledge fade away if you ever switch focus, you can put them all down in a new blog you start – so that whenever you or anyone needs the tips, access to the great resource (the blog) is all one needs.

You can even turn the posts into a book, downloadable guides, online course or auto-responder series for your email subscribers.

All you have to do is start the blog and fill it with your knowledge.

20. Start a blog to share your views on current issues

Now instead of posting your open letters to the editor via post or courier like most did in the 1990s and early 2000s, you can now start a blog where you share your views on current issues like news or the things happening in your industry, field, niche, country, city, town or village.

If you are not driven by getting millions of people to read your news commentaries (that would be nice) everyday right after you start blogging on a site you own, and simply want to air your views in your own space – without worrying about whether the editor will finally accept your contribution this time round – then you now have a good reason to start a blog in 2019 and the years to come.

Yes, you can do this on social networking sites like so many people do – but there is a lot of competition there.

Though the blogosphere is saturated with opinions from different people, the competition there is not as stiff as the kind too common on social network sites.

On your blog, you can be very detailed when sharing your views – and even bring people from outside your blog to read your current posts.

Little by little your readership will grow – and you can then turn your small blog into a small online newspaper, a hyperlocal blog or online magazine – and invite others to contribute posts as well.

You can invite the leaders and experts (in various capacities) in your city, town, niche, neighbourhood or community to contribute articles to your new blog.

You can interview people and publish the interviews on your blog.

With a decent readership, you can even approach local businesses (in your area of focus) to advertise on your blog – that is if they don’t come to you first with the intention to advertise to your readers.

See also  Get traffic and make your blog popular: 10 ways to get noticed as a new blogger

21. Start a blog to make money with ads using different ad networks

To make money online with ads from ad networks like Google AdSense, Propeller Ads, Media.net, Mediavine, BuySellAds among others you are going to need to publish a lot of valuable posts that attracts a lot of traffic – direct, organic (from search engines) and social media referrals.

Most ad networks pay you a certain amount of money every time a user of your site (like the visitors that come to read the content you publish) clicks on an ad you insert on your blog. Some also pay you per every one thousand views.

To be successful at this then you need to publish content consistently, promote the content, tweak your ads – and of course get lots of people visiting your site.

You can start your blog and patiently build it by publishing say 3 to 10 (or more) great evergreen articles a day for 12 to 24 months.

Soon you will be having lots of content – which when promoted well leads to a lot of unique visitors coming to your blog and an ever increasing number of pages viewed on your blog by visitors.

You can easily make great money with ads with say 1 million unique visitors a month. Which takes 1000 blog posts each getting 40 hits a day or 500 posts each getting 80 unique visitors per day or 2000 articles each getting 20 hits a day.

Writing 1,000 great articles can take you 500 days (if you publish 2 a day), 200 days (if you publish 5 articles per day) or 100 days (if you publish 10 a day).

Writing and publishing 500 great articles can take you 250 days (if you publish 2 a day), 100 days (if you publish 5 a day), 63 days (if you publish 8 posts a day) or 50 days (if you publish 10 a day).

You can get the help reaching your daily quota of posts published by enlisting the help of a freelance writer you can easily hire and a virtual assistant to help with content scheduling.

You can even use paid traffic if you have your numbers right and are able to spend money on advertising and still ending up making a profit – or at worst breaking even.

You can then use the money you make from the ads to grow your existing blog, launch new blogs, outsource content creation and site management to an editor, invest in creating different products or services for your audience etc.

22. Start a blog to build your email list

With the many tools available nowadays to help you build your email subscriber list – one can say that it is easier than before to just put a landing page with an opt in and get people signing up in the thousands (or millions).

We have MailMunch, Optimizepress, LeadPages, Click Funnels, and many WordPress email optin plugins like Thrive Leads, Optin Monster…and more.

If you create a landing page on a blog you start you can increase the chances of more people spending more time on your site going through your material – hence increasing the chances that finally a person will opt in and become a subscriber – gladly receiving your emails in their inbox.

Why is this so? With a blog, after publishing a few pages and blog posts, you can encourage optins in several ways.

You can add an optin box in the sidebars, add opt-in forms inside post content area, use lightboxes (pop-ups), use links that when clicked shows an opt-in box, show forms with specific offers at the end of each post – and apart from all these create unlimited landing pages specifically designed to get people signing up to receive your emails – the message in them and to take the action you want them to take.

If most people who visit blogs rarely go back to the same blogs later in time – unless they have a very good reason for doing that – how many people do you think take the time to go back to one-page website with a squeeze page encouraging them to optin as a subscriber?

With a blog, a person visiting can get to know you a little better – and decide if opting into your email list is something they should do – right before leaving your site.

With a one page website they may just leave and never return.

With your blog – every post they read – reinforces the idea that they should sign up via email – and confirm their subscription.

And this actually increases the chances of more of the right people – hesitant to give you the right to periodically send them emails – opting in.

With a blog, you are also sure that people who come to your blog – and not your main email sign up squeeze page – to a specific post (from paid sources or free organic traffic) can also, quickly, without going through many hoops sign up via email for your freebies and future communications.

23. Start a blog to promote your podcast

If you have started a podcast chances are that your hosting your MP3 or MP4 files on LibSyn, SoundCloud, Amazon AWS or a similar service with emphasis on iTunes, Stitcher and similar services to get more people to download your podcasts, rate and review your show etc.

You can start a blog and use it to promote your podcast (and use your podcast to promote your blog as well).

In your new blog, you can do the following:

  1. write articles regularly on a topic that is related to a show you have already started (or launching soon)
  2. use various WordPress plugins to ensure people can listen to – and download – your podcasts right there on your blog
  3. add show notes, encourage comments and also include a downloadable pdf transcript – that your listeners and readers can save to their device or open in a new tab to read

Apart from the above, you can also create a dedicated page linking to each of your podcasts – all neatly arranged – to make it easier for the people who haven’t had a chance to listen your shows – to quickly go through all your past episodes and listen (download) their favourite ones.

24. Start a blog to promote your videos

If you are hosting your videos with services like Wistia, Vimeo or Amazon you can embed them in related pages or articles so that your blog visitors can easily find and watch them.

By themselves, the videos may be hard to find. But when you create specific posts for them – with detailed descriptions – on your blog and embed them in the post content area, readers are able to easily find them.

This translates to more people watching your videos, sharing them and taking the necessary action – like clicking the links (back to your blog and articles) you add to your videos using Microsoft PowerPoint and tools (like Snagit and Camtasia) that make creating and uploading videos to YouTube.com simple and quick.

If you have a channel on YouTube, you can use various WordPress plugins to automatically show related videos (from a particular channel – like your own) at the end of your blog posts.

So, apart from readers reading your articles, they will also be able to easily find and watch your videos – even subscribe to your channel.

With more of these actions, the views and rankings of your YouTube videos will increase.

Which then results in more people watching and sharing your videos – and your earnings from video ads (if you’ve enabled AdSense for videos) also increasing.

You Tube also makes it easy to embed your videos wherever you want on your blog. So, you can just as easily add them in your post content area just like you do with images.

25. Start a blog to improve your writing

To keep your blog updated, you will need to publish new posts regularly. How regularly, that is up to you to decide.

Publishing regularly for awhile will help you come up with a posting schedule that works for you. And with that a commitment to consistency, of course.

Which means you’ll be writing more and more – delving deeper in your topic – researching it, writing, editing and proofreading your content and of course publishing the content that is ready.

Your writing will get better and better as you publish more – which is, essentially, practice. This may not be true for everybody but it is for many.

You can notice the difference in quality looking at the first few blog posts published the first few months most blogs are launched and the posts published several months or years after launch.

Some attribute it to bloggers finding their voice, writing more (exercising), publishing more, researching more, thinking deeply about a subject, putting more of their ideas down on paper or screen and learning from other writers, authors and copywriters.

Blogging can help you get better at these four things:

  1. being confident sharing your ideas in written form
  2. staying consistent (persistently writing and sticking to your writing and posting schedule) even during the times you don’t feel like creating new content
  3. learning from others – those with similar and contrary opinions, perspective and take on the subjects you are interested in
  4. exploring the world of writing and the many gifts that come with it

Start a blog and practice writing.

26. Start a blog to learn how to get website traffic (and rank your site)

Here is what happens.

Most people who launch new blogs at one point start making searches for articles, products, services, courses and videos with answers to help them increase their website traffic, ranking, organic search traffic, backlink profile, social shares, pageviews, customer acquisition and conversions.

And that’s when they are flooded with material after material on different tools to use, different tactics and strategies from different corners of the web.

So one can learn for free (and pay with time) or find trusted premium info products that costs tens, hundreds or thousands of dollars on the best practices to follow in achieving higher metrics in the areas I have mentioned above.

If they are a good student, they’ll quickly learn from others but also listen to what their analytics (and gut tells them) and make the necessary adjustments to achieve their short term and long term blogging goals.

The good student will test things. Quickly implement and put in the hard work – especially in putting out more quality content on their blog and promoting it.

The good student will experiment with different word counts when writing and publishing posts, test use of different media, call to actions, publish different content types (case studies, how to posts, why posts, resources posts, interviews, viral type posts, news commentaries, list posts etc.) – and do this for the long haul (always measuring – and adjusting accordingly depending on what is working and what doesn’t).

27. Start a blog to reach people beyond traditional borders like neighbourhood, town, city, country, continent, culture, class

In the traditional world (let me call it that) you couldn’t share your ideas wide. If you could it would be expensive because of the many boundaries you had to go through, jump over or go around.

Think about boundaries like location (town, city, continent or village), language, race, religion, age, education level, culture or class.

It would take a lot of courage (if not money) to reach people in certain groups.

With the internet (and blogging) you can reach a wider population – and go beyond the limitations that were once common either because more people didn’t have access to the internet (compared to now) or mistrusted information, ideas, stories, opinions and input from people belonging to certain groups (learned prejudice that looking back now – they only see as stupid).

With internet access, people can search for things they are interested in. If their search terms bring up one of your articles (video etc.) on search engine results pages, good for you if they click-through and like what they see.

People who wouldn’t normally listen to you can now, from their little corner of the world, just come to your blog – and consume what they are interested in then leave (when they are full) to come back for a dose of your blog at a later date.

But you first have to start your blog if you haven’t done so already.

28. Start a blog to showcase your portfolio – or act as a curriculum vitae

Though many recruiters aren’t interested in the details in most CVs they receive, you can make things a little interesting by starting a blog where you post a CV that is available to anyone with internet access 24/7.

And I don’t mean one page on your blog with details your regular paper CV usually contains.

The whole blog should be your CV showcasing your work, skills, accomplishments, character, take on life and various topics – all these geared towards landing you well paying jobs or freelancing contracts.

Look at your CV the way it is now and come up with ways to break up different parts of that resume into detailed standalone pages that all link back to the main page.

You love to swim? What’s the story behind that? Can you tell it an article of its own and link to it (the article) from your main CV page.

Built a plugin, app, addon or extension for a particular OS (operating system) or web browser? Well, what’s the story behind that?

Wrote a book, guide or run a newsletter sharing some useful info on your particular niche or industry? What’s the story behind that?

Came up with a novel idea that saves people (like you or a potential employer) time, money, mental anguish? What’s the story behind it?

What great books have you read? What are your 10 best autobiographies (case studies, interviews, quotes on a particular subject) or biographies…novels…or short stories? Why do you find them fascinating?

Interviewed some expert – famous or not – and learned some great things from them? Well, what are the insights you gleaned from them? Note: this also applies to questions you ask a mentor or any valuable lessons you learned as an intern.

Your name, your childhood, your life in school, where you grew up – all these are inspiration for great stories that people interested in hiring and paying for your services (not all of them of course) may be interested in.

29. Start a blog to give people updates on an ongoing project

You can start a blog where you share updates on various projects.

Like something your readers, peers and customers are interested in – and waiting for.

Like that tweak you promised in a forum.

Like that sequel you promised once your novel landed on Amazon Kindle and made lots of sales.

Like that integration between your app and a certain software.

Like that next phase of your app development.

Like your journey the first year as a blogger.

Like that follow up post (some commenters requested after reading one of your blog posts) you promised.

Like the results of the tests you have been running.

Like the life lessons you learn as you age – you know you are not a project but your life’s journey could be very interesting to many people!

30. Start a blog to share your story

Now, your life’s story doesn’t have to be limited to a small circle of people: friends, family and relatives.

You can start a blog and share your story with people from different walks of life.

You can share your journey, successes, failures, beliefs, experiences and perspective on different issues.

For example, if there is some mistake you made, you can share your experiences and advice so that other people (with working ears) can learn from you instead of repeating the same mistakes.

You can share your successes. Which means others can learn a lot from you like how you dealt with challenges, kept your stamina, leaned on God, fueled your willpower and just kept going despite doubt and discouragement even from the only sources you expected encouragement to come from.

And don’t really keep postponing sharing your story on your blog because you are afraid of the one or dozen trolls that will come to your site and leave you nasty comments and emails just because they don’t like you (envious maybe) or don’t agree with you even when what you are saying is right.

The wise ones always take what they can (what they can use to enrich their lives and those around them) and leave the rest – and if they have to disagree with you do so with respect – spending their energy on implementation instead of wagging tongues and wasting valuable time on trivialities.

31. Start a blog to build your presence on social media sites

Though this may be contrary to the point on digital sharecropping above, you can, if you want to, use your blog to encourage your site visitors to connect with you on various sites like Facebook (like box for your page in the sidebars) or Twitter (follow button widget in the sidebars or tweet this/click to tweet links in post area).

You can do the same with Pinterest, Instagram, SoundCloud, Linkedin, WhatsApp, SnapChat, Google+, YouTube or any other sites and services you have in mind.

You can also use WordPress giveaway plugins like KingSumo Giveaways by Sumo to increase awareness of your various prizes or giveaways by encouraging shares on various social networking sites. So at the end of the day, you have a bigger email list with the right people and more shares.

32. Start a blog to quickly and easily create landing pages

If you want visitors coming to your soon to be launched blog not to be distracted by the many links to read posts, widgets on sidebars, related posts, popular posts, sharing buttons, images, navigation links or author box you can use various plugins like the ones from Thrive Themes to create beautifully designed landing pages to fully capture their attention.

With a singular expectation (outcome) in mind for this landing page, you can then send traffic to that page sure that more of the people landing on that page will heed your call to action.

With the many tools available now, creating landing pages on your blog is easier and fast – so you keep the traffic coming back to your asset – which is your blog.

Thank you for reading this article. If you have (or haven’t) started a blog already (I can help you install and set up WordPress, themes and plugins), I’d like to hear your opinion in the comments. What was your reason for starting a blog? If you haven’t started one yet, what is stopping you?

If the reasons above have inspired you and you are ready to start your own blog, please read this detailed guide on what to expect and do if you want to start a successful blog – regardless of whether you want to register your blog’s domain name (and pay for a web hosting plan) with Niabusiness.com or another hosting provider.

Details on how to get Niabusiness.com How to start a Successful Blog ebook and online course

You can also download my detailed ebook here or register for my online course here (on How to Start a Successful Blog) – click the links for more details.

So, there 30+ reasons why you should blog. Which one was your favourite? Let me know in the comments.

6 thoughts on “Why blog? 30 reasons to start a blog”

  1. I am big on #18 Philos. Build a blog to build a brand. I did that with Blogging From Paradise, placing a heavy emphasis on building a brand before anything else. This helped me land features on a few top blogs, all because I focused on brand building first then created my blog and income streams according to my brand. Super points here.

    Reply
    • Awesome. Thanks for reading and sharing your reason and vision for blogging – to build a brand that people trust; a brand that people know is there for them (with answers and solutions to their problems).
      To continued growth of your brand Ryan.

      Reply
  2. When I first started online, I thought of blogging as a necessary tool, a task that one must do to succeed online. Actually, I dreaded the idea at first.

    Had I been able to read all the reasons you listed when I started, I think my mindset would have been different and I would have had more focus on exactly what I was trying to achieve with my blog.

    To my surprise, I now like blogging. Once I had a definite purpose in mind, it became easier and even fun. I no longer think of it as a “chore” ” but something I want to do.

    Thanks for sharing this detailed list of reasons to blog. I love all of them.

    I “liked” your Facebook page. ~Jude

    Reply
    • Glad you found more focus and like blogging now.

      And having fun while doing it, that stuff keeps you going even in the toughest of days.

      It’s great hearing from you Jude.

      Thanks for reading the post and liking my page as well.

      I am looking forward to reading more new content from you as the months roll by.

      Reply
  3. Waoh!.. Such a detailed and indepth post… And educating.
    I have always loved writing, writing to teach people. When you do something consistently, it becomes part of you and you tend to become an expert in that field.
    Blogging is interesting, you just have to find a motivation and Phil here has covered a lot of them in this post.
    After reading your post I found many other reasons to continue blogging.
    Thanks for the great piece.

    Reply
    • You are welcome.

      Now, it is just going back to work and implementing the things that already work.

      Of course, the things we struggle with as bloggers, those too can be ironed out and made to work over time – with a lot of practice (doing the right things).

      Thanks for taking time to share your thoughts Julius.

      Reply

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