What Motivations Inspire Better Blogging?

What motivates bloggers to blog? Here’s a list of what I’ve identified as the main motivators for people to start blogging:

• You want to make money online
• You feel very strongly about a subject and want to tell the world about it
• You enjoy a subject very much and want to share it with the world
• You want to chronicle something important that’s happening to you for your own sake, and/or because it might help others

These motivations are far from mutually exclusive. In fact, the better bloggers often combine them.

Today, through a link from Shoemoney, I discovered a great example of a blogger whose motivation is to chronicle something important that’s happening to him in order to help others in the same situation, and in doing so, he happens to make good supplemental income. At SEO Journal, Loren Baker describes how Ken Savage turned his battle with Type 2 Diabetes into a blogging success story that is inspiring:

A few years ago, Ken was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, and in an effort to learn more information about the disease, and share that information with others, Ken launched the BattleDiabetes.com blog.

According to Loren, Ken is using a mix of Google AdSense, AuctionAds, and Text Link Ads to make about $40,000 US per year. Not bad for something that began as an “educational project.”

This is why understanding your own motivations is important: you need to create the right kind of blog for yourself based on a clear understanding of your motivations. The Battle Diabetes blog is chock full of information based on the latest medical research. It’s hand-picked, not scraped (A scraper site or scraping is when an automated program pulls in a blog’s RSS feed and presents it as original content on another blog without crediting the source). A lot of unethical shysters out on the web have a sales pitch for making money online that involves huge numbers of automated content-scraping blogs littered with ads and affiliate links. These are called splogs (spam blogs) and/or MFA (Made for AdSense) sites.

Splogs and MFA sites are what you can wind up involved in if making money is your single motivation. The goal of making money without regard for anything else is an example of how “ends justifies means” thinking is a dead end. Blogs which are based on a true desire to help others or a genuine passion are more likely to make real, sustainable long term income for the bloggers who author them. They are an example of how means justify ends.

Let me put it this way: the ultimate expression of “ends justifies means” thinking is cheating. The ultimate expression of “means justifies ends” thinking is the win-win outcome. In the example of the Battle Diabetes blog, Ken gets the satisfaction of helping others as he helps himself. The advertisers and sponsors of Ken’s blog are getting highly-qualified, relevant leads that have high conversion rates (the percentage of visitors who make a purchase). Visitors to Ken’s blog get a welcome resource about their condition, instead of another garbage-filled MFA splog–an unfortunate and pervasive problem people face when researching medical problems online.

It is means that justify ends for the win-win. Otherwise, you may as well lie, cheat, and steal.

So, what are your motivations for blogging? I will tell you straight up that my motivations are to help others, to be involved in something I’m passionate about, and to earn a living. I love blogging and people are always coming to me for advice and help on it. If I can earn good money doing it, then I have another way to help people, because then I can show them how to do it, too.

Making money from blogging may be a motive for you to blog, but I’m seriously suggesting that it not be the only motivation. Dig into yourself and find something you care about, that’s important to you, and blog about that, and then not only is it likely that money will follow, you will feel much better about how you acquired it.

Tell me about what motivates you as a blogger: Leave a comment!

Technorati Tags: make money blogging, blogging passion, better blogging, diabetes blog, diabetes