Blogging for Beginners – start by reading other blogs

In a previous post’s comments folks here indicated that social networking is a topic of interest, which is way important. For those of you interested in jumping right into lots of social networking, I suggest you make some blogging friends, a topic I covered in, How to make more blogging friends and be insanely popular!

There’s a lot to social networking, which we’ll get to, but first I thought we’d take a look at one of the most basic blog networking steps – reading other blogs…

If you like to blog, there’s a pretty good chance you also enjoy reading blogs. That’s good news, because reading other blogs is key if you want to get anywhere with blogging
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What do you miss from your pre-pro-blogging days?

I’ve only been blogging for money for about two years now give or take. Before that, I still blogged, I just blogged for me alone, and for no pay. I still wrote, I just did so in other writing venues.

Since I started blogging for pay, I’ve noticed that I miss a couple of things from before; when I only blogged for fun.

What I miss…

I miss reading blogs: I know, that sounds kind of funny; a blogger who doesn’t read blogs. I DO read some blogs, but not as many as before, and also, I sometimes feel like I’m more searching for topics or leads or networking than actually reading for fun. Also, frankly, after posting 30-40 + posts I hardly feel like reading blogs in my spare time. I’m online enough looking at blogs.

I miss writing what I want: This is two sided because by now, I’ve been blogging long enough that I do get to blog for money at blogs I like (I’m lucky). I also almost always get to choose what topics to blog about at said blogs. Still, before I blogged for pay, I never gave ANY thought to what I blogged about. I’d just blog what I was thinking. Now I spend a fair amount of time thinking about things like, “I wonder if my readers will enjoy this” or, “If I blog this theme, I might get more traffic” or I’ll run contests. I often put a lot of thought into posts before I write, which I never used to feel compelled to do.

Overall, I adore blogging. However, there are some differences between blogging for me, for free, vs. blogging for clients. That’s expected, because every single job comes with differences and ups and downs, but even knowing this is expected I do sometimes still miss the sheer fun of carefree, no pay, no traffic worries blogging. Don’t get me wrong, blogging for pay is a hoot at times, and trust me, I feel lucky that I not only get to blog, but that people give me money to do so. But once in a while I miss the old days.

Maybe I’ll take a day off here soon and do nothing but read all my old blog haunts.

If you used to blog for you, and now you blog for pay is there anything you miss from the old days?