Why Start a Blog?
Why start a blog? What are the benefits? How much work is involved? How do I do it? Where do I start? Lots of questions, I know. I’ll give you the answers to what I consider some of the most important ones right here.
Note to readers: The following article, “Why Start a Blog?” was written and published here on The Renaissance Garden Guy on March 10, 2023. On November 7, 2023, The Renaissance Garden Guy completed its migration from Bluehost to its new home at A2 Hosting. The RGG’s ever-increasing size and storage requirements necessitated the move to its own dedicated, huge, powerful, and lightning-fast A2 server. As you’ll read below, however, and on The RGG’s Host Your Own Site page, and in the RGG articles “Choosing a Great Hosting Service for Your Site” and “Two Websites, Two Hosting Services,” it’s clear that I remain a huge Bluehost fan, AND a loyal Bluehost customer. My latest website, A Man for Some Seasons, is hosted at none other than Bluehost. Read on to see why I love Bluehost.
Why start a blog? Loaded question. A good question, but definitely a loaded one.
I’ve written about this subject before. In “Choosing a Great Hosting Service for Your Site,” published here on The Renaissance Garden Guy back in January of 2022, I discussed the terms “blog” and “website,” and their subtle differences and similarities, and I made an unadulterated recommendation for the initial, and most elemental and critical component of website/blog creation: the new site’s hosting service. Feel free to click the above link to the article if you’d like to review the terminology, etc. For the purposes of this article, I want to elaborate a bit on last year’s article and give prospective bloggers/webmasters some personal insight regarding the reasons for, and benefits of, actually starting and maintaining a blog/website (here, I’ll refer to “blog,” website,” and “site” interchangeably), how much work is involved in creating and maintaining a successful blog, and what I feel is the best way to go about doing it (i.e. finding the right hosting service that will not only offer you a spot in cyberspace to permanently park your site, but will help you build it, maintain it, support it, and grow it).
Why Start a Blog?
Why start a blog? What are the benefits? Are there benefits? I’ll attempt to answer these questions by first synopsizing my life’s experiences to the point of turning them into what essentially amounts to a footnote, and then by relaying some pretty practical and relevant points on you.
The Life and Times of Yours Truly in 30 Seconds or Less
For quite a while, I’ve considered that my own intellectual and emotional archives of experiential line items might just be interesting enough for me to want to jot down some thoughts about them. Looking outward and backward, and even a little bit forward, from this particular temporal vantage point, I’m able to say that I actually kinda love my life, as well as all of the things that have lent it sum and substance along the way. My professional career has been fairly adventure-filled, and my personal predilections have always been varied. I love my family (including my dog, of course), I love my friends, I love all forms (and genres and media) of art, I love reading as much as I love the books that the words themselves come in, I love growing plants, I love wildlife, I love designing and engineering and building things, and I love writing stuff down. Admittedly, there’s nothing about my life – or the things it’s been filled with – that makes it any more interesting than anyone else’s. But I still do pretty much love it – the experiences, the people, the animals, the plants, the places, the things – all of it. And even though I remain aware of the fact that one man’s treasured likes and experiences might very well be another man’s cognitive flotsam and jetsam, I remain undeterred. Enthusiastic, even. I guess I do indeed love my life – and all the things that make it my life – enough to want to indulge in public fits of prolixity.
Damn the torpedoes.
The image collage at the top of this page is sort of a pictorial cataloguing of some of my more material (or at least not-quite-so-sentient) pursuits. It features photos of some of the fine and decorative art from my collections, books from my library, and things from my garden. This particular collage is included here as a reference to the fact that there are surprisingly diverse passions and appreciations, among other things, which are crammed into my small brain, and which are dying for a way to get out.
Got all that?
This whole thing was my intro, and it’s where the “Why start a blog?” part comes in. Here’s why someone would want to do it. Here’s why I do it.
Why Start a Blog? A Whole World of Benefits
- To reach a global audience. As far as whatever it is that you decide to write about on your blog is concerned, and whatever your reason(s) for doing so, remember that you’ll have the potential to reach, quite literally, a worldwide audience. Through the awesome power of the internet, your blog will have the ability to deliver your message to any person on Earth with a computer, a smartphone, or a tablet, and a connection to the World Wide Web.
- To tell the world about the things that you think it would like to know. That’s right. You’re the one who’s living your life, and nobody knows more about it than you. Since you’re the world’s foremost expert on what makes you “You” – including all of your passions, dislikes, skills, expertise, etc, etc, etc – who better to tell the world about your uniqueness than you, yourself, and thee? You, and all of the things that are in your heart and in your soul and on your mind, are what make you “You.” You’re the expert witness to the greatest story to ever unfold in your own personal lifetime. Stand up and give your testimony. That blog you’re thinking about starting will be your platform, and you’ll be your own greatest advocate. You have the floor…
- To help, inform, teach, and/or entertain others. Since nobody knows you better than you know yourself, as a blogger, you’ll be in the perfect position to spread the word about the things that you know best – things that may prove extremely helpful, interesting, edifying, or simply really enjoyable to someone else. It can be remarkably gratifying writing about and sharing something with which you are extremely familiar. You can bet that your knowledge can and does resonate with someone who happens to be in the mood for, and/or in need of, exactly the information that you’re laying on them. I personally find the absolute greatest reward in the knowledge that my readers have found one of my articles or features worth reading. This is, without a doubt, the primary reason that I put so much of my writing in blog form.
- To make new friends and meet new people. Writing and publishing material on The Renaissance Garden Guy has provided me with undreamed of opportunities to make new friends and meet new people. Many readers and subscribers of the site have become my personal friends. The connections I’ve made since I started my site have enriched my life beyond description.
- To experience literary freedom. If you like to write, whether professionally, or just for fun, the forum that a blog provides is basically a limitless frontier. There are no publisher’s requirements, restrictions, or deadlines. Your content, the way you’ll deliver it, and the timeline within which you’ll deliver it, are entirely up to you. You’ve got the freedom to write beautifully, or churn out crap. You can further a writing career, or simply free-associate your thoughts about what makes only you happy. And except for the FCC, there’s nobody you need to worry about pissing off. When you write for your own blog, you’ll have a blank slate in front of you, and nobody’s gonna grade your performance. (Note: Although you don’t need to be a brilliant writer to have a succesful blog, it’s often helpful to readers if the content of your posts is organized effectively. If you’re interested in learning a really simple formula regarding basic essay architecture and organization, please click here to read my short article from January of this year. The methodology I outline there is really useful in writing blog posts.)
- To make money. For some bloggers, this here is the all-important answer to the “Why start a blog?” question. It’s an undeniable fact that a blog that’s monetized (has one or more income generating mechanisms in place within its architecture and function) can be an incredibly profitable, ever-performing asset. “And what are those income generating mechanisms?” the more pecuniary-minded of the prospective blogger population may ask. There are quite a few, actually. Affiliate marketing is a really popular method for making money with a blog. With this this method, you – as the blogger – establish an affiliate association with a company that offers goods and/or services for sale online. When a visitor to your blog clicks on an affiliate link (which you insert into your blog’s pages) and then makes a purchase within a time frame specified by the seller in your affiliate arrangement, you get paid either a fixed fee or a percentage of the sale as commission. Amazon Associates is one example of a popular affiliate marketing program. Third party advertising platforms allow bloggers to earn income when visitors click on certain ads featured on their blogs’ pages. Paid memberships/paid subscriptions offer a way for creators to earn income by allowing paid members and/or subscribers access to restricted content on their sites. Online stores are essentially cyberspace versions of bricks and mortar establishments that allow bloggers to sell services and/or goods – whether virtual (like ebooks, audiobooks, digital art, etc) or tangible (anything from t-shirts to transmissions) – directly from a blog page. Blogs that employ any or all of these mechanisms can become very lucrative as their visitor traffic increases. But, as a cautionary statement, I will offer that successful blog monetization can take time.*
*Even though your new blog can start generating income within a few months, for your blog-derived income to reach stratospheric levels, or even living wage levels, it’s gonna take some time. How much time, and how much you’ll earn, is somewhat contingent on how much work you, as a new blogger, are willing or able to put into it. It’s also contingent on your ability to harness the internet’s awesome power of free advertising. By this I mean a couple of things. Social media platforms offer bloggers excellent visibility and connectivity. It’s always a really good idea to include links to your social media platforms on your blog’s homepage. And of course, you can share any and all of your blog’s links and content with your friends and communities on your social media platforms. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is an amazingly powerful phenomenon that allows your site to appear at or near the top of internet searches. There are things you can do to right off the bat to improve your site’s SEO score (an excellent hosting service can really help you with this), and things that occur organically over time, and with increased site traffic, that invariably propel your site to the top of internet searches. In any case, the phenomenal reach of social media and the dynamic of SEO are free tools for bloggers to use to make their sites more widely read, and ultimately, more profitable.
How Much Work Is Involved?
I like to break down the kind of work involved with creating and maintaining a successful site into two processes: 1) Start-up, and 2) Ongoing.
1) Start-up
Start-up, according to my definition, would include everything from your blog’s conceptualization through its creation and initial public release. I breakdown the amount of work involved at each of these stages below. Although the amount of work involved, as you’ll soon see, can vary widely (generally according to things like initial preparedness and skill level/technical proficiency), I would say that the start-up process is probably the most challenging and time/labor-intensive – particularly for those new bloggers who are mostly unfamiliar with the ins and outs of blogging as an activity, and who may not be entirely tech savvy. But, as you’ll see, any potential and perceived disadvantages a soon-to-be new blogger may face can easily be mitigated by retaining the right hosting service.
- Conceptualization. This is the “creative juices” part, and how much time and effort you’ll put into it depends on how fully formed (or un-formed) your ideas of your future blog’s nature and function have become within your own mind. If you’ve been thinking all along about not only starting a blog, but what you’ll actually be calling it, writing about in it, and using it for, than a good portion of the conceptualization part will already be in the books. And if you, being the efficient, forward-thinking soon-to-be-blogger that you are, have taken this preparation even more seriously and have created a schematic for your future site’s architecture and a flowchart for its function, then the conceptualization stage is already done. On the other hand, if you’re at the “I want to start blogging but don’t have any idea what I want to write about or how I want my blog to look and act, and I don’t know where to start, and I don’t even know what to call it” point in the conceptualization stage of your start-up process, then you’re going to need to take some time and put some effort into thinking this through. But there’s no need to despair. Because, even though you’ll want to have your blog’s concept – from appearance to content to functionality – pretty much in place and ready for implementation before you move on to the next stage, there’s excellent help – in the form of your excellent hosting service – on tap for you. And it is at this point that your hosting service – if it it really is an excellent one – can not only help you get your planning and conceptualizing in order, but can take you through every single subsequent stage along the path of your blogging adventure. By the beginning of the next stage, creation, you’ll want to have already selected and subscribed to an excellent hosting service. I actually STRONGLY suggest getting hooked up with your hosting service the minute you decide what you want to call your site.
- Creation. This is the “Roll-up-your-sleeves” stage and is probably the most time/labor intensive stage you’ll undertake along your entire blogging trajectory. For me, this stage would have been impossible to complete without the help of The Renaissance Garden Guy’s excellent hosting service, Bluehost. (Instead of it being a bitch-and-a-half, the Bluehost team made this process simple and un-time/un-labor-intensive for me.) In this stage, you’ll actually build your site, starting with the public creation and registration of your site’s name and domain. The design, architecture, and ultimate creation of your website will probably have one of countless available and legitimate themes at its core. Again, your hosting service will provide you the opportunity to pick from a massive selection of these themes. The theme you choose will remain essentially as your site’s architectural “bones” throughout its existence (unless, of course, you elect to change it). Choosing your new blog’s theme will be one of the very first things you’ll do during the creation stage. Content, at least some that’s very initial (as in your first blog post), is also something you’ll work out during the creation stage. Why start a blog? Your content is the reason. With your blog, the posts (or articles, features , pieces – the nomenclature can vary with the scope and character of your site) are what your site and your message are all about. They represent your content. You’ll want to have ironed out the appearance and function of your initial post, as well as its own content/subject matter, before you hit the next stage. There are a number of other items you’ll cross off your checklist during the creation stage, but the three I’ve just mentioned are biggies. Again, I simply cannot overstate the importance of your hosting service’s involvement, not only at this stage of your blogging adventure, but throughout the entire trip.
- Initial public release. This is the day that you let the fruits of your labor out into the world. By the time you get here, the conceptualization and creation (at least the initial creation) stages will be done, and your finished product (although with a blog, you’re never really “finished”) will be ready for show and tell. Look out world, here you come! The finishing touch on this particular page, and the start-up process as a whole, comes when you push the “Publish” buttons for both your site itself, and your first blog post.
At this point, the start-up process, along with most of the heavy lifting, is done. You’re on to the next process – the one in which you’ll hopefully be engaged for a long, long time.
2) Ongoing
With the start-up process behind you, you’re now sailing smoothly in ongoing process waters. Why start a blog? Your immersion in this process makes the answer even more obvious. Aside from some minor tech, some minor tweaks, some minor fire extinguishing, and some minor maintenance, what you’ll be doing throughout the ongoing process is creating your content. Your posts, articles, features, pieces – however you decide to refer to them – are the vehicles with which you’ll deliver your message to the world (or at least, at first, to your best buds). It won’t be long before SEO and social media shares start taking over and your readership starts to grow. The following are the things you can expect do be doing during the ongoing process of maintaining and growing your site:
- Content creation. I’ll say it again: This is why you started a blog in the first place. And it’s the part of the ongoing process which will occupy most of your time. Which is a great thing. You’ll be writing blog posts/articles/pieces/features ’til your heart’s content. You’ll be getting your message out and accomplishing what you originally set out to do when you first made the decision to start a blog.
- Tech, tweaks, and maintenance. There will be basic site maintenance that needs to be done (luckily, handy features like auto updates take care of almost everything), and you’ll encounter micro-bumps along the way (but whatever they are, they’ll be no problem for you if you’re hooked up with the right hosting service), and there’ll tweaks and adjustments you’ll want to make as you get more comfortable with your new site and your new role as a blogger. You may want to add new plugins that increase your site’s capabilities, or maybe add new pages. The list of inprovements and customizations you’ll be able to make to your site are practically limitless.
During this process, the amount of time and effort that you put in to your blog – and the results you’ll derive from that time and effort – are entirely up to you.
The hosting service that you choose will effectively be to your website as your beating heart is to your own life. In fact, not only is the hosting sevice your website’s beating heart, it’s also its central nervous system, home, and family, all wrapped up in one package. Your site, and its viability, are immediately impacted by the hosting service’s ability to maintain the site’s security, accessibility, speed, fuctionality, efficiency, and adaptability. Settling on the right hosting service is absolutely critical.
You know that I use Bluehost as the hosting service for The Renaissance Garden Guy. And in the article I wrote last year, I told you why. As a matter of convenience – for you and for me – I’ll revisit those points. But right here, I’m going to add a real life anecdote to the mix. I’ll keep it short.
Tech bugaboo: Fear factor zero. Software code exists as an amazingly intricate binary syntax. As far as I’m concerned, it’s comprehensible only to people with four-digit IQs or above. As a result of its overarching complexity, it’s also periodically subject to temperamental, vicissitudinous recalcitrance. In other words, with tech stuff like programming codes, there’s gonna be a glitch every once in awhile. I experienced such a glitch a while back with The Renaissance Garden Guy. But none of my readers or subscribers did. This is because it was immediately remedied by Bluehost’s tech support. It was a case of a third party plugin not playing nice with the rest of the site. Bluehost intervened on my behalf, arranged the remedy with the third party developer, and seamlessly fixed the problem. No harm, no foul. And not one second of downtime. The moral to this little story is that, as sure as the sun’s gonna rise, tech glitches are gonna happen. It’s a fact of blogging life. The only variable involved is the hosting service’s ability to eliminate the issue quickly, painlessly, and completely. My hosting service, Bluehost, did that very thing.
More Reasons to Choose Bluehost
Here, I’m going to essentially reproduce (with a few bits of new info) a portion of the ringing endorsement I gave Bluehost in my original article. I feel comfortable doing this for a couple of reasons. First of all, for more than two years, Bluehost has provided The Renaissance Garden Guy with the perfect home. Their service has been faithful, unerring, and entirely effective. I may not be terribly tech savvy, but I am an extremely savvy consumer. I know when I’m happy with a product or service, and I know when I’m getting my money’s worth. With Bluehost, I’m more than happy with the product and the service, and I’m getting more than my money’s worth. Secondly, all of the advantages to choosing Bluehost are as obvious and consistently relevant as ever, and the quality of Bluehost’s incredible range of products and sevices remains unparalleled among commercially available website hosting services. So yeah, I’m gonna lay this on you again. I believe in Bluehost’s quality and capability, and I feel extremely comfortable recommending them. Here is my endorsement, along with more of my reasons. Again.
Why you start a blog is why you should choose Bluehost. Back before I started The Renaissance Garden Guy, all of the things I wanted to write about were straining to get out of my tiny, un-tech brain, and I knew I wanted to use the blogging medium to release them out into the world, in spite of the fact that I myself was an abject tech idiot. Bluehost helped get my ideas out of my head and onto The Renaissance Garden Guy. They helped me create and build my blog, and they got it onto the web for me, and have kept it there in perfect operating fashion. They provide me with all the help I could ever possibly need with maintaining, adding to, adjusting, and improving The Renaissance Garden Guy.
Reputation. Bluehost has got an impeccable rep. I’ve talked to lots and lots of other bloggers in person and online, and Bluehost is universally the hosting service of choice among them. Personal recommendations are worth their weight in gold to me. But so are recs from digital review publications. Website pros write these reviews, and when they do, I pay close attention. Top10.com ranked Bluehost as the number one web hosting service for 2023, giving it a score of 9.9 out of 10. Forbes Advisor rated Bluehost as the “Best for New Websites” for 2023. PCMag ranked Bluehost as the “Best for Building WordPress Sites” for 2023. And techradar.pro ranked Bluehost as the “Best WordPress hosting” for 2023.
Value. As always, I encourage prospective bloggers to shop around. But for me, I felt that what I was getting with Bluehost (and as you’ll read below, it’s tons) was a lot of bang for my buck.
Included products and services. With Bluehost, you get domain registration (my site’s URL, renaissancegardenguy.com, is registered to me only and is guaranteed to stay that way), super security protocol (their SiteLock Security is unbeatable), free SSL certification (another level of online security), and a free, simple 1-click installation of WordPress (the go-to content management [web building] system for bloggers and web site owners) onto your site. I’m not a techie, but I can tell you that a Bluehost subscription comes with a ton of invaluable meat and potatoes, and a ton of awesome (and convenient) bells and whistles.
Technical support and customer service. When it comes to any and all questions or concerns, the team at Bluehost is unbeatable. Their technical support is awesome, and their customer service reps are friendly, courteous, and knowledgeable. And they’re available 24/7. Bluehost remains unbeatable in these areas.
WordPress support. If you happen to be tech savvy, you’ll be thrilled with the free, 1-click installation of WordPress onto your newly registered site. You’ll be able to hit the ground running and start building your site, exactly how you want it, and without any help. WordPress is so fertile, well-equipped, and adaptable, the sky literally is the limit. And speaking of the sky… If you’re not tech savvy (like me), than you’ll want to take advantage of an incredible suite of WordPress site building and support services offered by Bluhost, called Blue Sky. You can choose from different packages, from Blue Sky Basic (on-demand ticket support) through Blue Sky Pro, which includes SEO tools, mobile optimization help (so your site works great on all devices), and on-demand telephone support. Bluehost gives you the power and genius of WordPress, and offers you all the help you could ever need in exploiting its awesome potential.
Why Start a Blog?
The questions are answered, the rec has been made, we’re at the end, and that’s a wrap!
Loads of good reasons for starting a blog, no? And loads of good reasons for selecting Bluehost as your hosting service. The content’s in your heart and in your head. Bluehost will make sure that it gets out into the world, and into the hearts and heads of your readers.
Thanks for sticking around. As always, I thank you for your kind interest and readership.
Cheers, and Happy Gardening!
To learn more about everything that Bluehost has to offer, please click the button below, or click on any of the Bluehost banners in this article.
The Renaissance Garden Guy is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Additionally, The Renaissance Garden Guy is a participant in the Bluehost, SeedsNow, and A2 Hosting affiliate programs. I earn a fee/commission each time a visitor clicks on an ad or banner on this site from one of these companies and makes a subsequent qualifying purchase.
Please click here to view The Renaissance Garden Guy Disclosure page.
You are full of tonnes of new information. Great sharing John. Blogging is also a lot of fun, mostly thanks to the literary freedom you mentioned above, you are right however, it does take time. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for having a read of this one, Alegria – I do apprecitae it! I know you are well-versed in the pros and cons of blogging (and writing, in general). It’s one hell of a fun trip, isn’t it? Thanks again, Alegria!
Thank you for this informative article – much appreciated.
I thank you, Annie – for reading the article, and for your kind thoughts. I’m so glad you found it helpful. Much appreciated!
Thank for making the process of starting a blog understandable. You continue to surprise me with your variety of interesting topics. Wishing you continued success.
Thank you for reading the article, Rick. And of course, thank you for the very kind compliment. A number of readers have been asking about this topic, and I felt that a recounting of my own non-technical experiences might prove useful. Thanks again, Rick!
Very informative. You have answered many of my questions as I am thinking about starting my blog.
Thank you, Mary! I’m so glad you found this article helpful. I’m looking forward to hearing about your progress on your new site. Very exciting!
Very interesting and informative! You open the path for anyone who wants to start a blog… touched my interest too.
Thank you for sharing this knowledge 🙏🌺
Thank you very much, Roxxy. I truly do appreciate that. I’m glad you found it interesting. Even though I’m not much of a techie, I did feel that explaining my own experiences with the process would be helpful to those readers who’d been asking about this topic. Thanks again, Roxxy, for reading the article and for your kind thoughts – I really appreciate it!
Lots of great information. It must take real dedication and a lot of hard work to bring it all together. You must have a great deal of inspiration to keep working and writing as much as you do. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you so much, Kevin! I do appreciate those kind words, and I certainly appreciate your interest in my content here. The Renaissance Garden Guy is a labor of love, and, believe it or not, I never think of my efforts here as work. When readers are entertained and informed by the content here, it convinces me that my efforts are more than worthwhile, and that any time I put into The Renaissance Garden Guy is time that’s better than well-spent. Thanks again, Kevin!
Thank you John! Helpful and in-depth on the topic!
Glad you liked it, Waz. Thank you. I think sometimes the intuitive, non-technical approach to a topic like this is more practical and more “real” than a quantitative tech analysis. Thank you for giving it a read, Waz. And thank you for including your thoughts here. Much appreciated!