The Gospel According To Rhys - Colwyn Bay North Wales Web blog About Sport Technology Web 2.0 Internet Life and Making Money Online

This week is a very special sunday speedlinking, as for the first time, all 5 articles come from the same blog. I was planning on posting this last week, but unfortuantely server issues prevented me from doing so.

Recently, Diamond Geezer celebrated his 5 Blogging Birthday, and like me is a grizzled veteran of the blogging world. Unlike me however he is hugely popular, been featured in magazines, books and literature and does it all without selling advertising or pay per posts, he’s still stubbornly on Blogger, and has no inclination to switch to Wordpress. To celebrate his fifth birthday, he has written “The Five Equations of Blog”. Below are the five equations.

• Blog = Content + Comment - By allowing others to openly contribute to your articles you are truly creating a blog, rather than an article directory.
• Effort Expanded > Opportunities Earned – You should blog for yourself and what you are interested in, as the chances of gaining media attention and making a decent amount of money is negligable.
  
• Readers < Visitors < Viewers – Whilst your blog may be viewed from various sources, is it actually being read?
  
• Influence = (Originality + Regularity + Niche) / 100,000 – This is where Diamond Geezer shines. His work is original, he posts every day, and in a fairly unsaturated niche (actually, what is his niche?! I’d be tempted to say “London Life”, but his blog is more than that, otherwise I probably wouldn’t read it). John Chow is successful because he’s the authoirty on Money Making at a time when Money Making blogs were not around. Now, they are a penny for a dozen (and at times not very original, when I woke up this morning I saw 10 blogs write about Dealdotcom, the same thing John wrote about yesterday). Also, he can be original as he posts about himself. He gets a bollocking from some of his readers, but lets face it, nobody knows more about John Chow than John flippin Chow. Hell, nobody knows more about me than me my mum, but she doesn’t blog. So for all your favourite Welshy’s news and information, you have to come through me.
  
• Life + Blog > Life – Blog – See, this is something I agree with, and why I blog mainly. I don’t do it for the money (hell, I can’t do it for the money), but it enhances my life in ways I could not imagine. I have had the pleasure of meeting two wonderful people in Celeste and Han through blogging (the latter of which became my girlfriend). I have been on the BBC Radio Wales as an autorative figure of blogging. I have been to places and met people I have never met before, and feel like I know more about you lot than a lot of my ‘friends’. Friends have also changed their opinion, once slating blogging as “A geeky thing to do”, now they have their own. I often wonder if I lived in a more “blogger rich” area like London, I would socialise with bloggers a lot more.

So, there we have it. Whilst blogging is quite frankly a rubbish way to make money, it enhances your life in ways you don’t know. Would Darren Rowse be speaking at conferences all over the world if he continued with his Church gig? Probably not. Would John Chow be on TV if he was running some moderately successful techie site? I doubt it. Would I have gotten laid if women couldn’t see my sensitive side in my blog? Definitely not. Blogging gives a lot out, but it’s what you put into it that makes you get things out of it.

I’d like to end with a quote from the subject of today’s post, who summed up blogging in a way that describes it perfectly.

“[Blogging is] a bit like gardening, really. There’s no point whatsoever in creating a beautiful landscaped garden, except because you want to. Nobody else is going to stop and admire your garden, apart from friends you specifically invite around and a few random passers by. You’ll spend countless afternoons digging and weeding, and you’ll spend a fortune on plants and shrubs. Nobody else would care if you concreted over the lawn or let the whole place go to seed, not in the grand scheme of things. But if you put in a bit of effort, over a long period of time, you can create an environment of which you’re hugely proud. The outcome should always be measured in contentment, not hard currency. And I’d rather read an exquisitely landscaped garden than a scrap of crazy paving any day. “

Not a very speedlinking post I know, but I did say it was a special one