Why should you start a blog? Why do I encourage everyone to explore the benefits of a blog? Because blogging is awesome! Blogging can be exciting and it can be rewarding, let me share with you some of the reasons why you should start a blog now.

1. Blogging is Easier Than Ever

You may have heard that blogging is complicated, that it takes a lot of time and that it is difficult. But the hardest part is just deciding to start, that’s just a mindset thing, you need to take action and start.

If you can write an email, or use Word to write on the computer then you can also start and run your own blog.

When you use WordPress, you don’t have to deal with programming, or coding or HTML stuff. WordPress takes care of all that and lets you design your blog with ready-to-use themes and plugins. You just point and click to change the settings and customize it the way you want.

2. Search Engines Love Blogs

When you start blogging, the search engines, primarily Google come to your blog and “crawl” your site. Then they list your blog in the search results. But Google likes coming back to your blog and finding new stuff to add to their listings. That’s a great thing!

This is great because you will get visitors that come from Google, or Bing or Yahoo. These people are looking exactly for the stuff you write about. You can meet new people, you can increase your business or just help someone with your blogposts.

3. When You Blog, You Grow

Writing on the blog will make you a better person overall because writing helps you develop deeper cognitive abilities and communication skills. As you write more, you also learn more about the topic, you will become the expert that people want to seek advice from.

By using WordPress and blogging constantly, you’ll learn a lot about the internet and social media. This is great for your own self development because the Internet has so much information and tools that can help you in ways you have never even imagined before.

4. When You Blog, You Help Others Too

The main focus of a blog is to inform or to entertain and both of these things can help people you don’t even know. Your blogpost can help many people in their own way.

If someone is having a bad day, or a bad week or even a bad month they could find your blog amusing or uplifting and just with one post you could bring a little sunshine to their lives.

When you write a how to blog, you will help people get through a problem or a challenge they’re facing right now. Remember reason number 2? People search for solutions and when you provide information on how to overcome certain challenges, you will be making someone’s day by getting them through it more smoothly.

5. Your Blog Can Make Money

That’s right! There are endless ways that you can monetize a blog. From advertising, to product placement, to affiliate marketing or just by growing your current business. You could offer a service. When you are ready for this, you’ll find a large number of resources to help you along the way.

Many people make a great living from blogging, and it doesn’t take any special skills to do it. You have to follow through with your idea, start it, develop it and then put a blog monetization strategy in place.

I recently started a blog to talk about my adventures as a dad for example, and that blog started by making money from the very first day I launched it.

6.  Develop Your Voice and Find New Opportunities

When you have a blog, you can use it as a tool to develop your views, philosophies and to promote yourself. A blog can be a tremendous networking tool that helps people get to know you and decide that you could work together. Many of my blogposts have served as an entry way into many businesses where I have developed long lasting relationships.

As you develop your voice, you’ll find that it is a lot easier to tell people what you do, why you do it and why they should work with you. A blog can be the best self-promotion tool you can have without being “salesy” or “spammy.”

7. Your Blog Can Make the World a Better Place

When you blog, you have a voice and people listen. When you have something that is important to others and you blog about it, you become part of the leading voice. People sometimes find it difficult to express themselves but it is much easier to get behind a leader that has their same views and principles.

You can bring light to issues of corruption, human rights, or just report on local events and news that the world should hear about. I once read about a boy in Africa that developed a windmill to bring electricity to his village; that is life changing! And I read it on a blog, it made me look at scarcity and challenges as opportunities for change and growth.

8. You Don’t Have to Constantly Login to Your Blog

Unlike Facebook or Twitter you don’t have to sign-on all day long for the blog to work. The blog is open to your visitors 24×7. No matter the time of day, no matter if you are sleeping, eating or traveling, your blog is available for the world to read.

People on the other side of the world could be reading your blog and learning about you and the latest news. If you are making money from your blog, then you literally can make money while you sleep.

9. You Can Develop a New Hobby

Blogging can be a very rewarding hobby. You can make new friends, meet new people, learn new stuff and share what you have learned. You can try a new theme, a new plugin and just have fun. This is what a hobby is all about.

There’s a huge community built around blogging and it is easy to join, and of course there’s always the chance that this hobby could develop into a money making venture so you don’t even have to spend money doing it. How many hobbies can you think of that help you make friends, learn new things AND pay for themselves and even make extra money?

10. You Own Your Blog

Social media has been all the rage in the past few years. People sharing photos to Instagram, small news bits to Twitter, Life events to Facebook and even their favorite stuff on Pinterest. That is generally a good thing!

The downside with those websites is that you don’t own them. The moderators, the owners, can change their policies at anytime or just decide they don’t like your stuff and overnight you could find that your account was penalized, restricted or even removed.

Usually you have no recourse and you could lose all the effort and time spent there. With a blog, you are 100% in control and you decide every aspect of it. Nobody can tell you what you can or cannot post, you get to decide what post goes on the top, which picture you use, who can comment and all that stuff.

photo credits:Sashi Bellamkonda  & Bren Pompe CC

Did You Know?

• Over 400 Million people viewed more than 18.6 billion blogposts.
• There were 56 Million blogposts with over 7 million comments.
• … in one month

Source: WordPress.com, April 2015.

WordPress has the largest network of blogs and this report is only for their network and blogs plugged into their network, the true numbers are probably much higher because not every blog owner plugs into the WordPress network.

• Blogs have been rated as one of the top sources for accurate online information.
• Businesses that blog generate more leads than businesses that don’t blog

Are you ready now? It’s your turn!

Do you want to start a blog? If you do, then start today with my easy to follow, step by step getting started guide.