Blogging Meanders

I mentioned on Facebook that I was reviewing all my blog writing for the year. Ian Harris, an old colleague from my Armidale days, referred me to a post on problogger, 69 questions to ask to review your blog.

The post is not bad, and may be of interest to readers who are also bloggers.

Browsing around I found another problogger post, a survey on money earned by bloggers in one month, October 2008. The results are reproduced below.

For the record, I earned just $US21.11 cents in October from my various blogs, less than a dollar a day.

I  began blogging for business and professional reasons. I continue because research, writing and the need to understand have become something of an obsession. I continue, too, because of the village, the sense of community.

In my Facebook comment I said that I was reviewing my writing over the year, not my blogs. Like most bloggers, I am interested in how my blogs perform. However, my use of the word writing reflects my core focus: what have I said, what have others said, what is worthwhile, what are the gaps, what can be done to fill them? And, beyond this, how do I contribute and pursue my dreams?  

Sooner or later I am going to have to address seriously the question of financial return from blogging. If I want to research, write, speak and teach on a full time basis, then I need an independent income stream. But not just yet.

After the dog days that marked the middle of this decade, days marked by isolation and the black dog of depression when everything was beyond control, I seem to have come through to something of a golden period.

I go to bed at night thinking about things I might say. I awake in the morning in the same state. I am not an A list blogger, but with my blogs and now Express column I have thousands of people who at least browse what I say each week. At one level tiny numbers, at another enormously satisfying.  

With this for someone who suffers, as I do, from a Puritan conscience comes responsibility. Always I try to remember my readers. I write for my own reasons and on my own topics, but I try to remember how my writing might be read by those who do not share my views or who are from other cultures.

I haven't made any new year's blogging resolutions beyond these: I want to enjoy my writing; I want to write about new things to deepen my own understanding; I want to fill in some gaps; and, most of all, I want to continue to have some fun!