I think if you write well and write often you will attract an audience and within that audience are opportunities. I have made countless friends on-line, love the feedback and conversation, it has lead to a number of paying gigs, it keeps my writing muscle toned,,but most of all I like having the documentation and archive of this time in my life.

I’ve been blogging for nearly four years now, and it seems that the current toward ‘make money blogging!’ is getting stronger & stronger, as new, ad-heavy blogs weigh down what used to be a fun, exciting place — the personal web.

None of my blogs have ads — it would pointless at my traffic level in any case — but it also means I can do what I like. I can be personal, introspective, silly, or opinionated, without concern for advertisers.

Encourage those who blog for the love of it — read them!

I agree with you that a weblog should be a place for people to make contact with you.

A good weblog is like an incubator of ideas. It will often win you you friends and clients, especially if you aren’t trying for either.

Heavily commercialised weblogs are generally unreadable. There’s a lot of junk out there but that too will pass. People don’t read too much of their junk mail and the existence. of junk mail doesn’t shut down the literature and ideas section in bookstores.

On the other hand, Amazon might!

Am I supposed to have all these links? Is there something I’m missing?

Thanks for the affirmation that my blog is what it is, mine. :)

I very much dislike blogs where you can tell that every other post is trying to sell something and you are pretty sure that it’s not even something the poster knows anything about or has personally used. I generally won’t go back.

@Pelf – That’s the best idea, do what you do and be open to the possibilities :)

@Webomatica – Yeah I think so too, you can usually tell when something is “from the heart” or “from the wallet” ;)

But that doesn’t mean that I’m shutting all doors. When an opportunity comes aknocking, I will look at it objectively and see if it is beneficial to my readers, and worth my time :)

I had never even read a blog when I started. I had no idea how easily bloggers could cross paths with such amazing people. I had no idea that blogging could provide me with the challenge and motivation to just do that thing I wanted to do.

And it has brought other opportunities to move forward with my offline writing.

I have cut the length of this comment back so much now that I think I should go and blog it.

In brief – I have no aversion to adding some revenue streams at some stage but if I ever get around to doing it, whatever amount of money it brings in will always pale in comparison to my real reasons for blogging.