Why do you blog? What’s your goal? What do you get out of it?
I was watching a Dr.Who rerun, Utopia (Episode 11, Series 3) in which The Doctor, Martha, and Jack Harkness (Torchwood guy who comes back to life whenever he dies) have landed at the end of the universe, and also, it seems the end of time. The only remaining humans in the whole universe are waiting to travel to Utopia in a rocket that’s been built by the only other remaining timelord, The Master (who doesn’t yet know he is a Timelord.) Martha and Jack are chattering away. Martha is hopelessly infatuated with the Doctor and always jealous when previous traveling companions are mentioned, and that’s the subject of her conversation with Jack.
The Doctor chastises them for talking about senseless stuff, saying: “Here we are, just landed at the end of the universe – a zillion trillion years in the future and you two are….blogging!” He spits out the word “blogging” after pausing to think of the word to describe the inane conversation Martha and Jack are having, yet when I heard the line I thought: “Yes, exactly! That’s what blogging is! It’s an advertisement for the book rather than the book.”
What do you think? …and have you written the book?
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Alison Amazed 
My question starts with: Why did I start blogging? To get rich.
When I found out I wasn’t making any money let alone getting rich, why did I keep blogging: It has revived writing for me and I enjoy it.
No book yet, but hopefully sooner than later.
Lee
An A to Z Co-Host
Tossing It Out
Twitter: @AprilA2Z
#atozchallenge
Blogging from A to Z
Wow! That’s candid. I never thought I could get rich blogging, though apparently some do. I’ve really enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, writing about food blogging recipes – who woulda thunk it! 🙂 It hasn’t really revived the deep writing I’ve done in my life, but it is keeping me writing – and that’s a good thing, though I do sometimes feel the need for a more private journaling.
I’ve told the story occasionally on my blog and in comments to others. Before I started blogging I didn’t know much about it–I thought it was mainly for political commentary and celebrity dirt. I didn’t know regular people did it.
Then after I became unemployed, I decided that I could start weeding stuff out in our house and make extra money selling on Craig’s list. After I started doing this I also started getting spam mail about making money with blogs. I became curious.
Instead of sending in $99 to learn how to do it and started researching the internet on my own and discovered I could start a blog for free and I did my research online plus started learning by doing.
I didn’t get approved for Adsense so no money came in, but I began to really enjoy writing on a regular basis again like I used to do when I was in my 20s. I have since had the Adsense program approved and make a tiny bit of money from it. I still think there are ways to make a living at it, but not the way I’ve been doing it.
Lee
Thanks for that detailed explanation Lee. It’s my understanding that at one time (and possibly now) popular bloggers were solicited by companies wanting blogs written about their products, and would pay for them to write about, and link to their product(s). (The more links the higher you land in search results, SEO is more than using a few key words.) As Google has become more sophisticated in its search algorithms, it has implemented a strict “no paid links” policy, so that has changed the perimeters of digital marketing – which is now more focused on social networking. It’s a constantly changing world, driven by marketing. Google has even downgraded its own Chrome browser in searches because the company hired to place ads paid bloggers. You can read about it here – it’s all over the web – which is a great advertising game! i.e. Break the rules, apologize for breaking the rules, everybody writes about it and you get loads of free promotion.