Blogging can be a path to achieving your Goals

Everyday I look forward to reading my favorite Personal Finance blogs. What is so neat about blogs is that once you find a writer that you like, you can read his/her articles nearly everyday. You don’t have to wait for their next book or weekly newspaper column to come out. And Bloggers are a conduit for information. It’s like having dozens of eyes scanning the internet, financial magazines and TV shows for interesting PF information.

It wasn’t long before I started thinking about blogging. I had already written down a few goals that I wanted to reach, but I wasn’t sure what the next step would be to get there. I needed an action to get me on the road and I thought that starting a blog might help me work towards those goals. The first thing I did was to list the reasons that I wanted to Blog.

Why Blog?

• Evaluate financial choices – researching the info and then writing a coherent analysis is a great way to evaluate something.
• Improve writing skills. I have a goal to write a post every day. Practicing any skill with that kind of commitment will generally lead to improved performance.
• Extra shot of Motivation. Making public statements about goals, plans, metrics adds a little more motivation and commitment to actually see it through.
• Improve creativity. Finding something interesting to write about with enthusiasm everyday requires imagination and creativity.
• Get Feedback. Most blogs have a comment section and those comments can be very helpful for making adjustments and fine tuning your style.
• Share ideas and give something back to the community
• Meet people with similar goals and interests

These reasons convinced me to give it a try. Now, after a month, I have listed some thoughts about my blogging experience.

Blog Reflections

Getting started
I did not expect some things to be so difficult. I went round and round over picking the blog name. And I never imagined that pressing the publish button would be so cool. The first time was a rush - I had my own space on-line and I could write just about anything that came into my head

Second thoughts
At first, I had a lot of reservations. Will I run out of things to write about? Am I wasting my time? Then I would think who cares if no one reads it, I am writing about stuff that I want to learn more about. That was my primary driver, so I told myself to keep researching topics and cranking it out. I did not tell anyone about the site, not even family or friends. That wasn’t easy. Anytime you are working on a new project, its just natural to want to talk about it.

Setting a writing goal
I set a goal to write each day for a couple of months to build up content. I would do this before even trying to lure readers or place ads on my site. I wanted to keep it simple, neat and clean as long as possible and focus on writing good content with consistency. I noticed that it got easier and easier to write and I got faster at writing – precisely my goal. Not only did my writing improve, but I noticed that it became easier to think of just the right word when speaking. Words and thoughts just seem to flow more easily, now.

Don’t Break the chain
I followed the mantra of Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian. As a comedian, he needs to write new material quite often. He would pull long, stressful hours to meet a deadline. To alleviate this pressure he decided to dedicate himself to writing everyday. He motivated himself by keeping track of how many days in a row he had written. He wanted to keep the chain going. His mantra was – don’t break the chain.

Site meter
My curiosity got the best of me, I added a site meter. I will admit that it was a thrill to see that people were coming to the site and reading more than one page! Because I had not received many comments, the traffic count was a lot more than I had suspected. Maybe they were lost???

No Ad Blogging
After a month, I wondered if I would ever open my site up to ads. Money has never been a driver and the ads are a nuisance. Then one of the blogs that I read regularly, came out and cancelled most of his ads! What a surprise. I decided to hold off even longer – no ads.