6 Reasons to Start Your Own Blog

By Erin Shelby

Have you ever thought about starting a blog? There are plenty of reasons why blogging is a great hobby.

Many hobbies require membership fees or equipment costs, consuming a big part of your budget. This can be a problem if you’re not earning enough money and you want to keep pursuing your hobby during a time of unemployment or underemployment. But not so with blogging. Other than having internet access and a computer, blogging is a hobby you can enjoy for free. On WordPress.com, you can create a blog for no charge and there are a wide variety of beautiful designs to express your interests. If you ever decide to take your blogging to a higher level and make things more complicated, you can pay a fee, but until then, there’s no charge.

Athletic activities like sports and hiking can require physical stamina that not everyone is committed to or interested in. But people of all ages and fitness levels enjoy blogging. Whether you’re 26 or 66, you can start and maintain a blog. Regardless of your own fitness, you can explore other blogs and maintain your own.

Are you an aspiring poet, chef or photographer? Creating a blog is a way to express yourself by showing the world what you’re passionate about. By practicing what you love on a regular basis – such as photography – and putting it online for the world to see – you’ll become better at it over time. In this way, blogging is a way of becoming self-taught in something you love. While some bloggers have a large number of followers, others do so for their own personal satisfaction, achieving great joy from it.

Blogging is a weather-proof hobby. Whether the air conditioner is cranking, or snow plows are roaming the streets, you’ll never have to cancel your blogging plans. The only exception to this is if there’s a problem with your internet service provider or power supply. Blogging is a perfect hobby if you’re looking for something that can provide fun in all seasons and weather conditions.

Creating a blog is creating your own corner of the web. When you do this at a website like WordPress or HubPages, you instantly join a group of like-minded hobbyists. You can follow what others are doing in a similar hobby, or you can follow experts in a field that you know nothing about to learn new things. Through the encouragement of others, you can stay motivated to maintain your blogging.

In some cases, you can earn free products by having a successful blog. I’ve loved incorporating book reviews into my blog. Publishers have provided me free copies of books that I get to keep just for reading the books and providing my honest opinion. What could be better than something for free?