The Born Again Blogger
The false start to my blogging career is lost in the mists of time. Really. As a confirmed technophile, I started using Blogger when it first came out, didn’t like it and cancelled my account with a week or two, wondering what all the hoopla was about blogging. Just goes to show that I have no future as a fortune teller (where is a crystal ball when you need one?)
Starting My Blogging Career
The real start to my blogging career came in 2005. When I went freelance, I read a lot about setting up sites and raising your profile, and I was advised to set up a blog. So I bought a domain and set up Sharon’s Writing Lab, which has now moved to Wordpress.com.
Even then, I didn’t quite get it, though it was nice to have somewhere to put my creative writing. However, a month later, I joined a now defunct site which had an active blogging community, many of whom were writers. We spoofed famous novelists and poets, had writing competitions and generally had a good time. I discovered that blogging could be fun and I made friends and connections whom I’m still in touch with today.
The Addiction Begins
When I joined that site, I blogged daily and soon became addicted to it. Plus, people were enjoying the stuff I wrote, which gave me an incentive to continue. I was distraught when the site disappeared, but was able to move my content to an interim home on Blogger before giving it a permanent home on this blog. You’ll find much of that content in the archives. (Go on, have a peek at my early posts – you know you want to.)
Spreading My Wings
That was the start of something big and I now describe myself as a born-again blogger. Although I no longer blog daily on my own sites, you will see me popping up all over the web. I blog regularly for three or four sites (more to come soon), and guest post on many more. My blogging career had a humble beginning, but turned out to be very worthwhile.
This is my entry for the Blogging Start Group Writing Project.
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Get Paid To Write Online by Sharon Hurley Hall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Copyright for posts written by guest authors remains with them.Useful info
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A lovely potted posting-history, Sharon, and it doesn’t surprise me in the least to hear that you were right there at the beginning of Blogger. You early adopter, you.
David Bridger’s last blog post..An anthropological introduction to YouTube
I know, David, I know – I just love trying new things
Hi Sharon,
Thank you for this article! I have been tying to figure out the whole blog craze as well. I am still trying to figure out how do you start a blog, just pick a randodm subject and flow?
Eventually I will join the rest of the writing world in 2008 and create a blog!
If there’s something you’re really interested in, that’s a good topic for a blog, Trudy
Let me know when you start yours.
I also started out on blogger and still have my original blog in operation. We met on that now-defunct site and it’s too bad it faded away. Why knew then that blogging was worth a lot more respect than we gave it then when it was just plain fun.
Malcolm
The fun is the best part, Malcolm. Good to hear you’ve got your original blog in operation. I plan to get rid of my original domain, but I’m glad I was able to save my Writing Lab posts.