NBI: Winding Down...Final Thoughts

The newbie blogger initiative is coming to a close, Syp has a list of all the new blogs and advice posts up over at Biobreak.   This month has been a heck of a lot of fun for me not only due to meeting so many new bloggers, but also because I stumbled across some established bloggers I really like that I somehow managed to miss all this time.  My blog roll changed more in the past month than in the previous two years.  I think we all owe Syp a dept of gratitude for organizing an event that has been injected some new life into our corner of the blogoverse.  Good on you Syp! 

I never did get around to my advice post, mainly because I was out of town most of the month.  However, it was also hard to say what I would have added in terms of general advice given all the great posts  that other bloggers put out.  Some of my favorites were Anjin's general advice on how to get pageviews (Sente has another good general advice post, along with Blue Kae), Tesh's poignant piece on blogging as a social activity, Rowan's duo on the mechanical aspects of setting up blogger (I actually tweaked my settings after reading both of those), and the part of MMOgamerchick's post where she explains why she usually answers all of her comments (I couldn't agree more). 

During the course of the month, I spent some time thinking about what, if anything., I consider to be the golden rule of blogging.  I think it would be something along the lines of "Write about your passion."  Write what you'd like to read, what you want to say, and what you feel needs to be said.  Blogging is a labor of love more than anything. Very few of us are ever going to reach the popularity of Tobold, and even the Tobold's by and large aren't making any money blogging.  The only reason in the world to blog is because you have something that you want to express, and thoughts and experiences you want to preserve.

For me this blog is one part diary, one part personal soapbox. Of course like all bloggers I want to be read, or else these posts would be unpublished Word documents on a random desktop.  But I'd say creating something you are happy with and that expresses your voice is probably the single most important goal to have as a blogger.  Whether your blog attracts a small audience or a huge audience, if years from now you can look back on certain posts and think "I made that, I'm happy with it and I'm glad it's out there on the web" I'd say you have succeeded.