Why on Earth do I Blog?

Yikes, I've been tagged! Twice!

On April 14th, Mark at Me and My Drum tagged me. He then told me about the tag by leaving a message for me at MyBlogLog. Nice touch, Mark!

How cool! I'd never been tagged before. At least that's what I thought.

After doing a little research about blog memes (which is what this tagging game is), I found this cool site that is tracking this "Why Do You Blog?" meme: Blog Meme Tracker.

I read through the many, many names of bloggers being tagged, and found out that I had been tagged by Lynn Terry back in February! Oops! At the time I'd read Lynn's post, I had not been included among those she'd tagged (and yes, I whined a bit). I didn't go back to that thread later so didn't know she had succombed to my whining and tagged me–because I'd used my non-hyphenated domain name URL to leave comments on her blog… and I'd set up my Google Alerts only for my hyphenated version! "Doh!"

Anyway, here's how this blog meme tagging thing works. First, you have to get tagged by someone. Then you make a post linking back to the person who tagged you, and listing five reasons why you blog. Last, you tag five other bloggers (and let them know) so the fun continues.

Here are five reasons why I blog:

1. To learn all I can about blogging and online marketing. I love to learn new things. No matter how much I know (or think I know), there's always something new I can learn. I learn best by doing.

2. To share all I learn. To me, blogging is synonymous with sharing. So many amazing and generous people have helped me to learn during my years in the online marketing world! They did it by sharing. I'm happy to be doing the same. Really–it makes me happy! Blogging is one of the easiest ways to do this.

3. To be part of an amazing worldwide community and build exciting new relationships. Blogging involves much more than posting content on your own blog. That part is fun for me because I enjoy writing. But the real joy is participating in the community aspect of blogging. Reading (and learning from) what other bloggers are writing about, participating in their blogs by posting comments, discovering new blogs through their links, sharing sites and insights… these are the things that REALLY got me totally addicted to blogging.

4. To freely express myself. I have a job. I enjoy my job; it involves writing. But I can't write whatever I want, and most of the topics I get paid to write about are boring. I can't get too creative or express myself too freely. Managers are too damn sensitive about what they think might offend someone. Believe me, I'm not offensive. Here's a stupid example: I was writing a profile about a new employee based on information she freely volunteered. I mentioned the word "divorced." I also mentioned that she had three children. "Censorzilla" deleted the horrifying "d word" (as if being divorced was somehow negative). So readers were left to wonder if she'd had three kids out of wedlock, had killed her husband, or whatever. Silly, huh? On my blog, I write what I want, how I want, dammit!

5. To earn money. With a blog name like "Best Online Earning Strategies" that better be one of the reasons I blog, right? I'm earning money with this blog through various means (affiliate links, Adsense and other tactics I'll be blogging about). I'm also earning more money on my other websites because of this blog–it's helping me to send more traffic to them.

OK, those are my five reasons. Now to tag five other bloggers…

Jack Humphrey
David Olsen
Iszuddin Ismail aka Kidino
JohnFTM
Liz Strauss

I don't see any reason why we can't bend the rules… if you want to participate without waiting to be tagged, feel free to join in the fun!

"Tag! You're It!"