Starting a blog is easy. Sticking with it and actually succeeding long term can be far more difficult. Before starting down the path of starting a blog consider these important points that may make the difference between your blog being a long term success versus dying a slow and painful death.
Defining The Success Of Your Online Blog
First of all a blogger needs to consider how they are motivated as an individual. If you are intrinsically motivated then you may base the success of your blog on how many people are reading it and how positive the comments are about your posts. To maximize this kind of motivation be sure to activate the comments on your posts so that others that read your blog can let you know what they think. Of course this can be a two edged sword as not all of the comments will be positive, but just knowing that people are paying attention to your blog can subconciously push you forward to post more and post better over the long term, allowing you to slowly but surely increase your audience and develop a sense of worth in what you are doing with your blog.
If you are extrinsically motivated you might base your success on financial income from your blog in the form of returns on your Adsense ads or on affiliate revenue generation from links that you weave into your posts. Either of these is a totally valid measure of success depending on the person doing the writing, but it could be assumed that in general everyone is motivated to some extent by one of these things (even when they say that they are not). If that person does not receive some form of either emotional or financial reinforcement for the work they are doing they will post less and less until they finally stop posting at all.
Know what you are motivated by before you start your online blog and research ways to maximize your potential for reaping the benefits that provide that motivation. At the same time however, a new blogger needs to be realistic about the path they have chosen.
