Personally, I find that there’s so much information about how to get a blog started that it’s distracting at times. The only way to create a good blog is to just write, whenever you feel like it. Subscribers and stats are great, and can often discourage, but you just have to keep going, even if no one reads your blog.

Being a filmmaker myself, I constantly have to emphasize the script. In a film, the story must be solid before anything else can be. A blog is the same way - if the writing is not solid and enjoyable, nothing else matters.

There is no set standard of blogging. A great blogger strives for excellence in everything he does, because of the personal standard he has set for himself.

Several people have contacted me regarding advertising on my blog, but I turned them down (I’m 16 years old and don’t want to deal with the legal issues). Perhpas one of these days I’ll open up an advertising program, but right now, all expenses are covered.

At the same time, there are some renowned blogs that don’t accept comments (Daring Fireball, ShawnBlanc.net) and I just can’t understand this. That’s half the blogging experience cut off, just like that. What gives?

If you are starting a blog to make money, you’re in the complete wrong mindset. Making money on a blog isn’t wrong, but just using your blog as a space who’s only purpose is to generate money for yourself is. That way you’re benefiting yourself, not your readers, and they are the ones that matter.

I strongly believe that digg is awful. See my comments on Chris’ blog: http://chris24.ca/opinion/wouldnt-care-if-my-blog-was-banned-from-digg#comment-1393
What makes everything worse is if you combine the two previous things together. That’s one contributing factor to digg’s increasing annoyance. It’s called spam. We definitely don’t want any of that. A large number of blogs in this world are spam blogs (splogs, as they are affectionately known).

In my opinion, the most important point you make is that you should interact. Interaction is what drives blogging. The more you have, the better. And there’s the reason I never got hooked on Tumblr, no way of commenting, no interaction. I could never stand how one-way that was.

Anyway, once again, great post.

Totally agree, there are way too many bloggers preoccupied with trying to drive up traffic and revenue. I really admire those who truly care about the content and strive to make it as insightful and sincere as possible both for themselves as the writer and their readers.

I try monetize my blog, not for personal gain, but to push it back to my blog. I stick affiliate links in posts, but hardly ever write posts just for the money. Right now, I have a bit of money I’ve earned from my blog, that I haven’t received yet. This money will be going towards a nice new look to my blog. When I get that new look, I’ll have smaller ads, because there isn’t anything I really need money for, that is blogging-related.

Writing content for Digg is a terrible habit, and sadly, I’ve gotten trapped in that dark hole before. I actually just published an article about why I wouldn’t care if I got banned from Digg.

I should also quit blog365 very soon, so that I don’t find myself blogging ‘too much’. Maybe a post every 2 days would be good for me. I think I’ll try that by March.
Great, inspirational post.