Blogging For Fun.. Again
I have written so many times over the years about falling in and out of love with blogging but what it always came back to was obligation. Once your hobby becomes your job it is always going to lose an element of the fun. When Mode (a huge media agency who worked with online content creators) unexpectedly went bust last year many of us lost a regular income through ads running on our sites. It was pretty grim for the blogging community at the time but months later I have a clearer perspective and I'm remembering why I loved to blog all those years ago. At one point I was scheduling posts weeks in advance and was so driven and productive but I'd lost the connection to my audience. It's the same with YouTube.. if I record, edit and upload a video in one day I can't wait to read the comments and engage with the viewers but if I filmed that video a month ago I'm completely detached and if I've lost interest in it, why would anyone else be interested?I'm not telling you that my blog will be ad free forever or that I will be avoiding all paid content from now on but since removing my banner ads and focusing more on engagement and readership than earnings I am enjoying posting more than I have in months.. maybe even years. I have started to read blogs again, I've lost myself for hours (usually at night when I should be sleeping) in old favourites that I haven't read for the longest time. I rediscovered bloglovin' and am checking my feed for new posts as often as I check instagram (and frequently double tapping images out of habit) as well as actively seeking out new sites to follow. I think Instagram ruined blogs for me, actually. 'Micro-Blogging' is quick, concise and involves no links or loading pages but nothing compares to reading a full post on a blog the writer has created.I know some people believe that blogs are dead and sometimes if you repeat something enough it can become true - the power of suggestion is strong - but so long as there are bloggers blogging and people reading (no matter how few) blogs will be here.. providing money isn't the driving factor and we remember why we started!