James, where have you been?

Firstly, you’ll have noticed that I haven’t been posting blog content as much recently. The good news for all the Better Start Blogging subscribers is I haven’t abandoned my blogging efforts. Well there are a couple of reasons for my absence and these serve as a greater benefit for the blog readers.

The two main reasons why I haven’t been blogging as much.

Reason One – I needed a break from blogging.

Over the past month, I’ve given this a lot of consideration. Better Start Blogging is a blog where I tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I work in an environment where things are constantly changing. In order to succeed you need to be different and unique. The main issue with blogging about blogging is it’s not unique. Anybody that has a blog could create a blog about blogging. In my professional opinion it seems a bit pointless.

Here’s my point. Bloggers that blog about blogging will create a blog post that should in theory assist business owners and newbies with blogging. However, the type of bloggers that read blogs about blogging are your competitors. Then your competitors will either generate something similar to promote to their audience which is bloggers that want to talk about blogging. In modern day culture, you can educate someone to do something then it is likely he or she will use those skills to develop their own business. It’s the modern way.

Let’s look at blog commenting. Why do other bloggers that are interested in blogging comment on your blog? We all know its to build their community, right? Well it is partly. The other reason is to generate traffic for their own online presence and leads and sales. The sad thing is that bloggers that blog about blogging are targeting the wrong target market. What’s the point of promoting to other bloggers? It’s highly likely that idea has been rehashed; redone and ghost written more times than you could imagine. Your target market is offline businesses and those that want to create an online presence.

Let’s talk about affiliate programs, shall we? Bloggers that blog about blogging usually target their competitors. There is nothing stopping them creating a blog and placing a bunch of affiliate links on their site.  This is an example of how a market becomes saturated. In addition, you get into the arguments of which bloggers affiliate links should you click.  It’s happened before to me. You mention of thinking of buying a product to another blogger then they decide to get an affiliate link for your ideal product. Just to make a few dollars. I can understand that people wish to make money, but I will buy on my own terms.

After my 4 years experience and my general rant a break is deserved. Sadly many bloggers believe they are going to make a killing from working from home. If you can do it I respect you. Believe me it’s not easy. I’ve done the work from home business, it is not the land of luxury that a lot of these self-proclaimed gurus make out to be. A majority of self-proclaimed gurus want you to buy into the make money from home non-sense, because it funds their lifestyles and egos. I have a lot of respect for the humble bloggers: such as Darren Rowse of ProBlogger and Chris Garrett (ChrisG.com), although they are icons in blogging, they are humble people. They don’t claim to be an extraordinaire or a guru. In the Internet industry you can not claim to be a guru. Technology is constantly changing and so are the rules. I can recall a number of so-called gurus and they when presented with an issue, they’ve given poor advice. Nobody knows everything. If you claim to do so it’s a foolish mistake.

I wanted to take a break to see what I can offer that is different to a vast majority of the blogs online. I haven’t given up and I never will. I enjoy blogging. I must admit life does get in the way and we need to evaluate things from time to time.

Reason 2 – Better Start Blogging has given me a job in SEO and blogging

Recently, I started a job for a web based company in Yorkshire. The chairman was very impressed with my knowledge of: SEO; social media; video content and blogging. Then he invited me to an interview. The beauty was that my experience from Better Start Blogging and Atmmultimedia (my web design portfolio blog) gave me the opportunity to begin a career in web marketing. I was head hunted for this job role. I got a phone call one day and my CV was read by the chairman of a web company and he wanted to meet me. I am now a full time e-marketing executive. Blogging can be an opportunity to open many doors. It is also crucial that you continue to develop your own personal projects to keep your knowledge and wisdom alive.

Summary

There you have it. I needed to create a recent blog post to keep you all informed. Have a look at several of the blogs in your niche, you’ll notice a majority of the content has been written over and over many times. A majority of the content is nothing new. Most common example would be: avoid blogging burnout – in all fairness this is common sense.

If you want to become a great blogger write about your experiences. I am encountering a variety of experiences at the moment. Such as starting a new job; relocating; working on SEO on a daily basis; creating blog traffic; those experiences are more valuable and unique than reading someone else blog and ghost writing their content.