Now! Is The Time To Consider Starting A Blog…

If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, now is a great time to start one.

Reason one: there’s no money to be made right now, so you should have an easier time finding your true voice. Blogging is everything from frustrating to cathartic and even if you have no commercial aspirations, or actually particularly if you don’t – it’s just really cool to document your thoughts while you learn and grow in a subject.

I started my blog many years ago, without any belief whatsoever it would become my job. People ask me, “so, how’s your business model doing?” and I say… “what business model?”

I loved what points brought into my life and thought I could try to explain the points game without using acronyms and other bulls*hit designs to make people feel stupid, when they absolutely don’t need to. It coincided with my life long passion for travel and without ever trying to fully monetize the site, things blossomed to seven figure monthly readership, woo-hoo!

That’s why now is the time to start.

You’ve got passions, you’ve got interests and if you’re like most of the world right now – you’ve probably got extra time on your hands too. People are looking for things to read, videos to watch and how to’s on all the things they want to know how to do.

Your friends and family, which realistically will be the only people who care about your blog at first, have more time to interact, share and give feedback.

Whether it’s collating photos from old trips, or doing something entirely outside of travel, blogging is a great way to organize thoughts. Personally, I find that the more of yourself you give to the blog, the more people care. Anyone can report the news, but how does it affect you? What’s your take on it?

One great tip: think of blogging like a tree. Have a central thought, and then take it in a few different directions. Like a trip to Israel: you could write one article about your trip, or you could branch it into different directions. You could cover the must sees, then separate out must eats, then reflect on your opinions – it’s easy to let one concept lead to lots of content.

When I first started, I sent my (pathetic), wordy, disorganized blog to my favorite blogger and he was very polite. His very generous words of encouragement were a reason I pushed harder to carve out a space for myself, learn how to do things better than some other bloggers and become worth reading to some.

My advice: write for yourself, write without dreams of making money and always put your best info out there to everyone. Don’t hold back. Having no distractions to pimp things out allows for the best creativity to flow, and if you write compelling enough stuff, the rest tends to follow anyway.

If you’re thinking about it, I wrote a few crucial starter tips, and have a few thoughts on blogging in a wider respect. Hope you find something fun to write about!