Before You Start a Blog: Determine if Blogging is Right for You

Before you start a blog, it's important to determine if blogging is right for you to ensure your blogging experience will be successful.

You Enjoy Spending Time Surfing the Web

Successful blogging requires a large time commitment and a great deal of sweat equity. Blogging doesn't stop after you write and publish a blog post. Instead, it requires promotion, visiting and reading other blogs and websites, staying abreast of news and issues related to your blog topic, and more. Most of your blogging activities will occur online. To be a successful blogger, you must enjoy reading, researching, spending time on your computer and surfing the web.

You Like to Write

If you abhor writing or writing doesn't come naturally to you, then blogging might not be for you. Building a successful blog requires frequent, meaningful updates, responding to comments, leaving comments on other blogs and more. Each of those success factors requires writing. To be a successful blogger, you must be able to write prolifically.

You're Passionate About Your Blog's Topic

Successful blogging requires that the blogger write frequent, meaningful posts about their blog's topic to attract new readers, keep readers interested and keep readers coming back. If you are only slightly interested in your blog's topic, it will be difficult to log in each day and come up with fresh, exciting posts and commentary. By choosing a topic you're passionate about, it will be easier to update your blog with a smile on your face each day.

You Can Commit to Blogging

Successful blogging is a commitment in terms of time and effort and requires a great deal of self-discipline and self-motivation. You must have the ability to fit blogging into your schedule and be commited to sticking to that schedule.

You're Comfortable Publicizing Your Thoughts, Opinions and Ideas

As a blogger, you will be publishing your opinions for the entire online community to read. While it is possible to remain anonymous and become a successful blogger, anonymous success is not the norm. To attract a large audience and appear legitimate in the blogosphere, more people have taken to sharing their identities and a fair amount of personal information online. As such, bloggers are exposed to negative responses to their posts, and sometimes those negative critiques can be hurtful. Successful bloggers can handle negative criticism.

You're Not Afraid of Technology and You Are Willing to Learn

Blogging requires some knowledge of the Internet and simple software. If you are afraid of your computer, then blogging may not be for you. Alternatively, if you are willing to learn, you can blog. Blogging and the Internet as a whole are ever-changing, and even the most successful bloggers are constantly trying to learn new things to further enhance their blogs. To be a successful blogger, you must be willing to learn how to get started and how to maintain and improve your blog in the future.

You're Willing to Take Risks

Much of successful blogging is related to taking risks from diving in and starting your first blog to launching your blog's first advertisement or adding the first link to your blogroll. To be a successful blogger, you have to be willing to try new things to enhance and promote your blog.