Why I started blogging, and you should too!

I've wanted to blog for sometime now...  

I would have started earlier, I guess I just thought that I didn't have the time.  And what would I get out of it? I mean, honestly, what are the chances of my lowly blog skyrocketing me to glory, fame and fortune? What are the chances of becoming the next Joel Spolsky, Jeff Atwood or John Sonmez? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing they're pretty slim.

 

So why did I decide to start blogging?

It all started with a business proposition...

My guitar teacher and I developed a very lightweight content management system, SiteMailCMS.  Basically it allows you to send an email to automatically update your website.  The theory being that most non-technical folks are already comfortable with email.  It's so ubiquitous.  It's one of the Internet's first killer apps.  So why not leverage it to allow folks to update their own website?

You can plug SiteMailCMS into any type of website as needed, without having to use it to create and manage your entire site, unless that's what you want of course. 

Developing the software seemed like the easy part, now we had to market it...

So how do two guys with a non-existent marketing budget go about marketing a website that no one's ever heard of? Well, we tried a couple of different things, like creating a free press release and posting to online forums like Stackoverflow.com and HotScripts.com.    

 

Is anyone interested in a trade?

Since we wanted to market our new content management system to web developers, we thought it might make sense to advertise on various web development blogs.  Usually you have to pay if you want to play, but we were looking for "free" advertising so we thought maybe some authors would be interested in a trade.  We'd be happy to do a myriad of tasks, both technical and non-technical, in exchange for mentioning SiteMailCMS.com in a post.  One of the non-technical tasks we thought bloggers might be interested in was ghost writing, so I wrote "Collaboration considered harmful".

 

Ghost writers need not apply...

The blogger I approached liked the post, however they didn't want articles on their site they hadn't written.  It seemed a shame to throw away a perfectly good post, so I decided to use it to start my own blog, which you're *hopefully* reading now.

 

Things didn't exactly turn out the way I expected, but...

Here's why I'm glad I started blogging, and I think you might be too:

1. It's creative and kind of fun
2. It's a nice resume builder
3. It gives you a chance to practice your communication skills and express yourself         
4. It gives you a chance to learn, teach and otherwise interact with some other really smart people

So what do you think, did I miss anything? 

Thinking of starting a blog, or maybe you already have? Were you glad you did? Any additional benefits I may have missed? Leave a comment below to continue the conversation.