Just click publish

Blogging is Easy? Um, No....

Blogging is easy, right? Anybody can do it! Just write a post and click Publish.

Not really.

Look, I LOVE BLOGGING. And I want every business owner and freelancer from here to the Ethereal Plane blogging, believe me. But I’m not going to get you there by pretending it’s easy when it isn’t. In a limited logistical sense, yes, all you do is write something and click Publish. Just like all you have to do to paint is pick up a brush and start painting, and you’ll be DaVinci.

We all know there’s more to painting than that.

So why the hell does everyone go around saying blogging is easy? I’ve done it myself! Easy compared to what? Ah! Now, this will be interesting. Supposedly, blogging is easier than learning a bunch nerdy, geeky technical things and creating a website yourself. In reality, unless you are a master with databases, FTP, and WordPress plugins, you’re not ever going to get to the point where blogging will be any less complicated than a “normal” website.

If you try to get ANYWHERE beyond the “type in something simple and click publish” level, you will quickly realize that you need to know all manner of geekery. In order to set up and run a self-hosted WordPress blog, you need skills and knowledge in most of the following:

• XHTML/CSS
• Image editing/resizing/optimization
• Domains and web servers/hosting
• MySQL Databases
• Installing software onto a web server and configuring it
• PHP
• FTP and folder/file permissions
• Mod Rewrite and .htaccess files

And that’s just to install WordPress, get the blog up and running, and write posts with pictures! You want YouTube videos? Polls? FeedBurner feeds? Image galleries? Well, there are some plugins for that… Oh, you don’t know how to install a plugin? Well, too bad for you!

I bet suddenly, Blogger or WordPress.com are looking better and better, aren’t they?

And yet… everyone who has been there, done that says that having a self-hosted blog using WordPress is the best way to go. That’s right. I agree with that. It is the best way to go. But it is not the easiest way to go. I don’t want you to be fooled into thinking that it is the easiest.

We haven’t even started talking about the difficulty of writing for the blog so that you get the results you want. That is the hardest part of all! What are you going to say? Why are you saying it? What do you hope to achieve?

Who said any of this was easy? No, my friends. It is anything but easy. Blogging is FLIPIN’ HARD.

But still, the numbers of real bloggers writing real blogs continues to grow.

So I guess it’s only fair to ask the question: Why do we blog, then?

Because it’s worth it. We can express ourselves through the most amazing information medium the world has ever known. We can foster and strengthen relationships with other people. We can make money. We can help others. We can even get famous! A blog can help all of these things happen and more. The benefits are so compelling, people like me can earn a living helping others get through the complicated stuff and get to the beating heart of the matter: connecting with other people.

Blogging is not easy. But it is worth it.

Other Blogs I Author
1. Across this bridge
2. Marketing myself
3. Struggling parents
4. When life become a book
5. Read Between the Lines
6. Internet Lifestyle
7. The Sleeping Turtle Art Gallery

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