My Motivation for Blogging
I was right smack dab in the middle of a post about the latest “Ballmerisms” from another SteveB speech, when a most insightful e-mail arrived in my inbox:
Mail from Robert McLaws: BoyWonder.NET:
Sender: peter
Email: [removed to protect the guilty]
IP Address:
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Public Function BrainDump(ByVal everythingDotNet As String)
??
I see what's going in, but what does this return?
This is a question that works on so many levels, that I had to stop what I was doing and address it immediately. Rarely have I seen sich an insightful question.
Blogging is a black hole that sucks up a decent part of my time every day. I maintain (or try to anyways) three individual blogs, one security blog, and one (soon to be more) blog community. All told, these sites generate somewhere close to a half-million page views a month (LonghornBlogs.com had a million page views in the last 2 weeks). [I'm not sure what my stats on this blog are like, but I get on average 20 new Google-driven visitors a day]. I believe a lot in blogging, and I've overhauled part of my company operations to be able to allow me to spend time working with the community. The reason is soon to follow.
Now, this person may very well have been talking about the method signature that I geekily put in my subtitle. It is missing an explicit return value type at the end of the signature. Because of this, the function implicitly returns a value of type Object, meaning it can return just about anything. But Peter was right, the return value needs to be explicitly declared. So, while Peter asked a really basic question, a more profound one is immediately derived...
So what do I get out of all this?
Mental Clarity
My brain is a real pain in the ass. At any given time, my brain is processing 3 or more totally unrelated things. Multithreading is good in silicon but bad in grey matter. Because if this, I use my blogs to empty my brain to allow other things to process. Many times this helps other people too, and that's cool. My blog is primarily for me to see my ideas outside the whiteboard in my brain, allowing me to refine my ideas without dwelling on them.
Archive Retrieval
Google is a wonderful thing. Once I get my ideas out (hense the function name “BrainDump“), I can use Google to look them up at will, any time I need to refer back to them. no more racking my brain trying to find the last place I solved a really cool problem in code. Chances are, it's only a few clicks away.
Frustration Outlet
Nine times out of ten, my blog is a place where I can vent my frustrations about things. Nearly all of my articles on Builder.com, my products, my community efforts, etc, come from getting royally pissed off about some shortcoming or other hassle. I feel that too many people get pissed off about stuff, and then all they do is complain. I complain, then I do something about it. It doesn't make me better than anyone else. It just makes me motivated.
Charity Outlet
Anyone that knows me well knows that I genuinely want to help people whenever I can. It's just my nature. Sometimes people take advantage of it, but oh well. Chances are, if something frustrates me, then it's frustrating other people too. If by my articulating a thought process and solution in a blog entry saves someone else time/money/frustration, then I've made a difference in someone's life, moreso than I could have done in any other manner. And that is extremely rewarding.
Free Diplomacy Classes
Blogging has taught me more about how to deal with people than therapy or speaking lessons ever could. I'm a much better communicator today because of my blog, and I'm much better at handling personalities too. If you knew me as a kid, you'd know that my social skills have improved dramatically.
Brand Recognition
My blog is my brand. It is a public definition of who I am. You can find out anything about me between all my blogs. This is important, especially if you're a freelancer looking for work. Because what is any intelligent employer going to do after getting your resume? Google your name. Your blog is a way of making sure that what you want to get seen about you is seen.
Build Relationships
I met so many interesting people through my weblog. I mean, Wednesday night I hung out with the guy that started Macromedia for pete's sake. Could I have done that any other way? Highly unlikely.
Exposure
I develop server controls for a living. I cannot afford to pay $50,000 for a years worth of full page ads in MSDN Magazine (yes, that's really how much it costs). Having a blog gives me a no-cost captive audience, builds customer loyalty, and promotes a conversational atmosphere. I don't treat my blog as an ad machine, and I try very hard not to wax philosophical (that is what my corporate blog is for). Case in point: on Wednesday I announced the launch of GenX.NET. That day, 17 different people came up to me at PDC and congratulated me for getting it finished. I doubt that would have happened had I just put out a press release put an ad in ASPnetPRO.
Customer Loyalty
As a customer, I want to have a conversation with the people I am giving my money to. Why? Because I know how powerful it is to have a conversation with my customers. Consequently, I am more likely to purchase from a vendor who maintains a blog than from one who doesn't.
Revenue
Indirectly, my blog generates cash. Not through intrusive banner ads, but through several latent marketing efforts. I'm not the only one who likes to have a conversation with the people I give my money to. I've had more customers come from this site than a banner ad ever could have done.
So, that's what I get out of blogging. How can I sum it up in a nutshell?
Value.
Blogging provides value to me and others. I constantly get asked, “Is your company successful?” and I always answer “yes”. The next question is usually, “are you guys making any money?” To this point, the answer has been “no” (although that changed on Wednesday). Then they say “so why do you consider yourself successful?”
Because the only investment I have in what I do is time. My financial investment has been extremely minor (less than $5,000 over the past year), and the return is so great it is nearly immeasurable. My blog has allowed me to make something (IMO) great out of absolutely nothing. it helps me think better, it helps me communicate better, it helps me maintain friendships I never would have met elsewhere.
Having said all that, I have now modified my SubTitle's function:
Public Function BrainDump(ByVal everythingDotNet As String) As [Value]
And I think it works very well. It passed the debugger anyways. Time will tell how well it performs during execution.