BLOG TILL YOU DROP. Have you jumped on to the blogging bandwagon? Oh, what a silly question to ask. If you’re reading this right now, you’re probably a blogger. But just in case you’re not yet into this wonderful world of blogging, you may like to know a few things why people are surfing the Web.

Anyone can start a blog. Why blogs and not websites? Because a blog is comparatively cheaper to set up than a website. Some blog services like Blogger or WordPress are free.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to install your own blog. Any savvy teenager can do it. So can you. But you can skip this post if you’re already an intrepid blogger. This post is addressing newbies who are just starting on the learning curve.

Big deal.

Now, if you don’t already know, blogs are reshaping the social landscape of blogosphere. They have become a very effective and powerful tool for communication. . .and for making money, too, if that’s your life-long dream of making it big time on the Net (but how you go about it is another story to tell).

Entrenched traditional print media like newspapers and magazines are sitting up because blogs are stealing the thunder from them in many areas of information dissemination.

As the popularity of blogging grows exponentially, you can bet that marketers are sensing great opportunities in the blogosphere. If they have something to sell or an idea to promote, marketers know they can benefit from using blogs.

Corporates such as Nike, Sony, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard and many others are already using blogs to build branding.

Other marketers and advertisers are looking for sites with good traffic to place their advertisements. Many are looking at ways like using paid links to promote themselves. However, this is one method of getting backlinks which Google, the mother of all search engines, frowns upon.

No one likes to get on the black list of Google. If you run foul of big Goog, your new blog may be “kept on hold” in the sandbox which means you site is under the radar of other bloggers and search engine spiders. If you’re using Adsense and start clicking on these ads yourself, Goog will smack you down with a ban.

These are a few of the pitfalls you may face in your blogging experience. The learning curve is there for you to overcome and be on your way.

Anyone with some individual skills and talents or interests can also promote his or her own enterprise by using blogs. If you surf the blogosphere, you will discover many of them out there.

If you can hack it as a blogger, you got a brave new world right in front of you to conquer. But all this comes with a price – you got to work at it if you’re aiming for some kind of success at the end of the day. Hard work pays, lazy blogging is like someone we like to refer to as a ‘couch potato.’

By and large, does it matter who or what you are to become a blogger? Not really. You can be an entrepreneur, trainer, journalist, salesman, actor, travel guide, retiree, or work-at-home mom (WAHM). Blogging is open season for anyone.

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