Blogging for a Purpose

I have been blogging full time almost for a year now. In the early days I made nothing from blogging and these days 60% of my income comes from blogging. I say this as the monetization of my blogging efforts enabled me to experience a bit of a writing break through. Putting money to my blogging efforts made my efforts feel valuable.

I always thought they were valuable, but with out money to show for my efforts, it didn't measure up in the real world.

I have read over and over again that people should blog about their passions or they will suffer from Blog fading. I do believe this is true almost. I often provide executive coaching consultations (paid and unpaid). I can talk about it with a passion, but the same thoughts don't flow through my fingers. As such, I had a blog fade on the subject despite my passion.

Similarly, I have a blog about the Distribution Business. I am not passionate about it, but I write about it weekly. Its a money earner. There is readily available news to write about it and I have expertise in the area. The money makes it possible to cover that one.

Money is not everything

As the money started to come in from my blogging work last summer, I became reinvigorated and I went from writing a half dozen articles per week to dozens per day sometimes hundreds per week. (I fluctuate and I do not advocate my style of method.) The money confirmed the value of the work and initially translated into a bit of something else.

It almost transcended into a Purpose

About 5 months ago, I started to realize that I was blogging about my passions and I was earning money. However some of my blogs had purpose that did not make an impact.

I was blogging to share my ideas, providing my insights, even sharing a bit of my twisted humor. This was a purpose, but it didn't do that much. People were reading but nothing tangible aside from reading my stuff was taking place. I was making money for my efforts and it was work. I enjoyed my work more so than much of the work I have done in the past, especially when I was able to exercise my twisted humor.

But I am an idealist and on a good day a visionary. I need to dream the future, grab the vision and make a better world by moving towards that goal.

Writing about second and third hand news with my personal insights wasn't quite cutting it. But there was definitely something there. I knew that I did not want to be a traditional journalist. There was a time in my life about 10 years ago, that I did, but not now. My ego is a little to big to cover the story, I need to be a part of the story. For a journalist that is taboo unless you want to go Gonzo, which for me has some appeal. But going Gonzo doesn't bring a dream into a reality it just turns reality into a ludicrous hallucination.

My twisted humor savors the ludicrous hallucination, but my inner idealist needs to taste a realized dream every now and then. Plus I can pass on the sour and hollow belly feeling that follows the hallucination.

Putting all this together enabled me to figure out that I needed to do something with my blogs with my sites, I needed to achieve something to make something real out of knowledge bouncing around in cyberspace. I won't list out my plan for the future, but I can share some early steps that I am taking to blog with a purpose.

I recently launched a political site, calling it a movement might be a better description. Its NoMoreIncumbents.org.

I have been sitting on this domain for many months now running the scenario in my head that I wanted to start a political action committee or a lobbying group or some kind of grass roots community to help defeat incumbents in elections. In the states an incumbent is 98 percent likely to win re-election. It has been built into our political system for about 100 years now, but Radio, TV Cable and now the internet have made it a bit of a plague, threatening the concept of democracy all together as multi national corporations and special interests literally rewrite the laws to suit themselves.

So I am going to do something about it. I do not know how big this movement will get, but I'm looking for writers and bloggers to join and manage individual blogs on the site covering each of 50 states and I might expand to other countries if there is a need.

That's not the culmination of my efforts

No More Incumbents is not the final step for me. The technology and the business process running this site are akin to a beta test for something that I will be doing next, that is very far away from politics. Something that will change entertainment significantly in the years and decades to come. (Don't worry you can dis believe me if you like, I thrive when I'm told that I am wrong or crazy or what have you. Has something to with my childhood. I have always been an underdog and learned a long time ago how to channel negative energy into a positive.)

The Main Point

The key here is that there are three primary components to successful blogging that I have identified so far:

1. Blog about your passions - (our hero said as he looked someone else's dead horse in the eye and beat it again)
2. Blog for money from day one - otherwise you are not taking your passion seriously or giving yourself a fair opportunity.
3. Blog for a Purpose - When you blog to achieve something, and you surpass Gonzo journalism, you become part of the story, the event. The blogosphere enables you to cover yourself. You become the content embodied and from an internet business model, you become the source of the primary content. Primary content on the internet is the most valuable thing going. Channel that value through your purpose, channel that with your passion, leverage it with the money you earn, and you will be successful.

If you read this far, you know or remember that I am a wordy bastard. My apologies, I will do my best to step away from comment responses for a time to let others get some equal time on the subject. Being a wordy bastard is also a taboo and one of the original reasons why I spent so much time not blogging with a purpose. I was blogging to hear myself think out loud. There's nothing wrong with that, but its much more valuable when there is a purpose in it that takes you towards a goal.