8 Benefits of Being a Blogger

I started my first blog way back 2005. It was about philosophy and spirituality – the topics that are usually lurking on my mind. I even participated actively on online forums about theoretical physics and other weird stuff just to promote my blog. There were also times that I am involved in online debates, fighting for my principles. That time, I’m still employed as an accountant and can hardly update contents on my blog. So my blog was moving at a slow pace. Though I tried free blog hosting, like WordPress.com and Blogger.com, my first blog is a self-hosted WordPress blog, with my own domain name. Well, it was always been my childhood dream to have my own website with an exclusive name or URL (Uniform Resource Locator). That is why when I learned about the processes of making one, I immediately jumped into registering my own domain. Unfortunately, my original domain name has expired and my blog has become a sweet blogging memory now. I’ve been in the blogging industry for more than six years now. And with this current blog of mine that you are reading, the following are the 8 benefits I personally enjoyed as a blogger.


1. It can be a source of income

Yes, blogging can generate money for bloggers. On this blog, I earn gross receipts of more than $300/monthly from Google Adsense alone – and it’s even increasing every month. How did I do that? The process is simple… you’ve got to drive a lot of traffic to your blog. And to attract traffic, you need to provide a bunch of quality blog posts. To let you know, I have already published more than 400 articles on this site as of this post.


2. It develops your writing skill

Well, I am an accountant and not a journalist. I can even remember how shy I am to publish my articles when I was just beginning to blog. But through the years of blogging and writing, I was able to hone my writing skills and grammar. What I did was to follow the world’s top bloggers and study their writing styles. Now, with almost a thousand of articles I’ve written, I can say that my writing skill has somehow developed.


3. Blogging enhances your knowledge

Blogging is publishing regular fresh information to your audience. Thus, you need to do constant research and increase your knowledge base. When you blog, you teach. And just like any teacher, he or she must acquire more knowledge to be able to teach more effectively to students. To achieve success in blogging, we also need to learn important things, such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and other Internet marketing techniques. Because of blogging, I was able to add them to my knowledge.


4. It gives you fame

When a blog becomes popular, the blogger also becomes famous. That is of course unless you will not introduce yourself as the person behind your blog. Although I don’t want fame because I am a shy type of a man, I always introduce myself on every “about page” of my blog to encourage trust and confidence from my audience. Because of this blog, I was already been featured in the Entrepreneur Philippines Magazine in their March 2012 issue. Through this blog, I am also receiving invitations from different event organizers as a guest and as a resource speaker. This blog is exposing me to a wider audience.


5. It introduces you to more friends

The blogosphere is a big community. Just in Facebook alone, you can find a lot of bloggers’ groups. And yes, I’m a member of more than ten bloggers and online professional groups on Facebook. These groups which consist of members from all over the world helped me increase my friends online. Further, it also helped me grow my real friends through blogging events.


6. It can give you authority

If you will choose the right niche for your blog, align your expertise, provide the best quality content for your readers, perform effective social media marketing, and implement effective search engine optimization, you will likely be recognized by the search engines and their users as the authority on your topic. Although I don’t have a PhD degree in business and finance, I have earned some authority on those categories. I believe that authority doesn’t come from diplomas, but it comes from the quality and satisfaction of what you serve to users of your knowledge and information. Do you agree?


7. It can give you the power of influence

Through your blog, you share your knowledge and expertise that may become useful to your audience. Through your blog, your talents, skills, knowledge and wisdom are presented. When your blog posts change the lives of many people, you become influential. It’s hard to influence people. But if you will set yourself as an example of a motivated blogger and an inspiring person, you can influence many people through your blog. You just need to be dedicated to earn more thank you messages and positive testimonials from your readers to earn influence. That is also one of my main objectives on this blog.


8. It gives you flexibility

As a blogger, I can work anytime and anywhere. You are your own boss and you can even earn money even while sleeping. But although bloggers are flexible, it doesn’t mean they have absolute freedom. Of course we, as bloggers, also need to conform to ethics, justice and excellence. However, when it comes to work life balance, bloggers have the advantage.


There are many other benefits or advantages of being a blogger. But to sum up it all, I believe that the best benefit of blogging is to help people. These people include your audience that needs your useful information and yourself that needs financial, professional and personal development. How about you? What benefits are you enjoying as a blogger?

Vic

Victorino Q. Abrugar is a marketing strategist and business consultant from Tacloban City, Philippines. Vic has been in the online marketing industry for more than 7 years, practicing problogging, web development, content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, and consulting.