If you are a blogger then you know all about blogging but lately it has dawned on me that there are many who don’t actually know what a blog is.
While I was writing my recent post 7 reasons your friends or family don’t support your blog, one of the reasons I considered for a lack of support was that people may not know what a blog is.
A blog means different things to different people and with the negative reputation that bloggers have due to some bad apples it is no wonder people are confused about what a blogger is and what a blogger does.
Soo… What’s a blog?
What is a blog -definition?
The Cambridge dictionary defines a blog as – a regular record of your thoughts, opinions, or experiences that you put on the internet for other people to read.
Whereas Miriam Webster has two definitions – a website that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks, videos, and photographs provided by the writer.
And a regular feature appearing as part of an online publication that typically relates to a particular topic and consists of articles and personal commentary by one or more authors
However this isn’t strictly an accurate definition as many websites are now regarded as blogs that don’t fit into the above box.
What does a blog really mean?
Throw away the definition, blogs are much more than just the definition.
What a blog really is is subjective to the writer and depends on what their intentions are for their blog.
If you speak to a hobby blogger and someone who blogs full time as a career you might find that you get different answers.
But to both a blog is a space on the internet that the blogger has usually built from scratch themselves and is personal to the blogger.
Bloggers put a lot of hard work into their blogs, often hours each week as there is so much more to just writing blog posts.
There is a whole host other tasks including research, social media promotion, creating graphics, Pinterest, marketing, affiliates and much much more.
What is a blog and how does it work?
I think we have covered what a blog is but how does it work?
If you aren’t a blogger or haven’t started a blog yet then you will only know about the front end of a website. But there is much that goes on behind the scenes.
Blogs are either self hosted via wordpress.org or are created on a service such as Blogger, Wix, Squarespace or WordPress.com.
Bloggers add blog posts with a mixture of text and images, either personal photos, graphics or stock photos, taken by others.
Bloggers work on their blogs in different ways.
Some people just open the laptop and type whatever they feel like typing that day with no research.
Whether it be about a topic they are passionate about, a review or whether it is what they have done that day.
Others do research, both on the topics to write about and also keyword research as part of SEO.
Basically, keyword research is using tools to pick words that people search for in order to have their website placed on the Google results page.
A blog is purely personal and there really is no right or wrong way to blog.
Even tips that I suggest might not work for different blogs, no blog is the same and it is best to use what you can learn and see if it works.
If it doesn’t work out then I suggest bloggers try it another way.
I have three blogs in different niches and I am learning what works for each niche and what doesn’t and it couldn’t be any more different between them.
What is a blog used for?
There is such a diverse range of blog niches or topics.
Blogs can be used as a personal diary of events or used to give information to others from a personal or purely informational perspective.
There are many niches including food, travel, lifestyle, entertainment, finance, personal and more.
But the things they have in common is that the blogger wants to share something for the world.
Whether the world wants to read it is another matter but some of the biggest websites in the world are blogs.
What does my blog mean to me?
I became a full time blogger in 2020 and I had many thoughts about my first month as a full time blogger.
My blog started as a hobby back in 2011 and in the last few years as I learnt more about SEO and wanted to grow it really took off.
Blogging has changed my life and it is a similar story for many bloggers, there are more than 10 ways blogging can change your life.
Joining Mediavine was a huge thing for my blog.
My blog income increased 4-5 times on a normal month and Q4 especially December is 6-7 times.
I highly recommend to all bloggers to apply to Mediavine when you meet their threshold, which is now 50,000+ sessions a month.
It isn’t just the extra income but the Facebook group for Mediavine publishers is a wealth of information.
