Today this blog is 10 years old — My thoughts on blogging

10 years ago on this date, I published the first blog post on this site. Now that I’ve been doing this for a decade, it seems like a good time to put the act of blogging itself under the microscope. So much of the digital world is a rosy, Instagram-curated non-reality. My goal for this post is to be frank and blunt.

Lots of people have thoughts about blogging, but a surprising few actually do it. It would be nice if blogs existed because the people who wrote them liked writing, and their visitors were just readers who liked reading. But this largely isn’t the case. Most people don’t have blogs. Most intelligent companies and businesses do. Blogs exist to make money. The people visiting them just want information — well written or otherwise.

i love shortcake you guys

The current state of food blogs tells you everything you need to know. If you want to quickly learn how to cook something, you search and find a slew of cookie-cutter blogs that all seem like they were written by the same self indulgent, twee person. There are 800 words of unhelpful blather, 14 trite DSLR photos of the food, 78 ads, a time-lapse video that automatically starts playing with whistling and ukulele music, a disruptive popover that tries to guilt you onto their mailing list, and finally, after 3 minutes of jerky scrolling, the recipe. We live in blog hell.

But I’m not on the high road. In a way, my blog is similar. The main reason I keep it going it is to make a little money as an affiliate of Amazon, eBay, and B&H. I’m also not morally above advertising. In fact, this post has gone on long enough without one. Here:

That ad will likely only generate a little pocket change in its lifetime. But you know what? I could use that pocket change. Do you want to buy this $1.29 candy bar, sir? Yes. Yes I do. I published a Google Adsense ad 3 years ago that will cover it.

I love writing. I love adding creative flair when a given sentence or paragraph can support it. But ultimately I do this for money. Sign up for my newsletter, you jerk.

Why do blogs exist?

A long time ago, before social media existed and before forums were cool, there were writers who wrote and published blog posts everyday. This was around 2002 or so. There are people out there who consider this the golden age of blogging. They miss this world. They want to go back. Yet, they themselves do not bother to blog. Here’s an example:

https://www.thehairpin.com/2016/08/blog-you-idiots/

That post was written by Kelly Conaboy, a person who claims to be writing a much-needed book about dogs. She writes some tweets sometimes, but she clearly does not write a blog.

Another example was written by a similar “publishing elite” type of person. They had tweeted about how people should blog more. I pointing out that she, herself, did not write a blog. She replied to my tweet, and later deleted her original tweet. Great fun:

blogs usually die with their authors but ok

— WHEN AN EEL CLIMBS A RAMP TO EAT SQUID (@SamMallery) October 31, 2019

So, in the early days of the internet, some people figured out how to blog. Some of those people got popular, and as soon as the opportunity arose to do something besides blogging everyday, they stopped doing it. This makes some people in the New York publishing elite sad sometimes.

What I find interesting is that the big social media platforms rose to power because they provided an easier way for people to blog. Twitter was originally created as a “micro-blogging” site. Tumblr was supposed to be an easier way to write an publish blog posts. Facebook is pretty much a MySpace copy with blog-like “newsfeed” sharing at its core. Instagram is a blogging platform that removes the boring chore of writing from the equation.

Everything in our world is a reaction to blogging. Everything is a solution that makes blogging easier. Yet, very few people actually do it. And those who do are in it for the money. Myself included. Where does that leave us?

I don’t know. What I do know is that I published my first post 10 years ago, and it was a very boring and bad post. I’m still doing it now, and want to continue doing it in the future. And, like those fancy publishing people in New York, I think more people should do it, too.

When you catch yourself writing a long comment to an article on a media site, realize that what you should be doing is publishing it as a blog post on your own site. The same goes when you write a product review on Amazon or elsewhere. If you write and post something on Medium, you are essentially handing your free candy bar money to someone else. Which reminds me, it’s time for another ad:

Blogging is mostly dead, yet it lives on with a few greedy people like me, and an army dreadfully uncreative food bloggers. Join us! Don’t do it on Squarespace, like your podcasts endlessly urge you to. Buy a domain at Namecheap.com, pay for a year of hosting at Bluehost.com, then have the free tech support at Bluehost get WordPress installed, and start publishing. If you don’t do it, how will we know that your hubby just LOVES your fresh blueberry muffins on cold January mornings?