Blogging. Flogging. What's the Diff?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This morning a reader, "urbanruralwitness," left the saddest comment on my post My Cup Runneth Over. "At least more than 1 person looks at your blog," he\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnshore\/2009\/06\/blogging-flogging-whats-the-diff\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blogging. Flogging. What's the Diff?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This morning a reader, "urbanruralwitness," left the saddest comment on my post My Cup Runneth Over. 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{"id":3921,"date":"2009-06-02T07:15:35","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T15:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnshore\/?p=3921"},"modified":"2009-06-02T07:15:35","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T15:15:35","slug":"blogging-flogging-whats-the-diff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnshore\/2009\/06\/blogging-flogging-whats-the-diff\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogging. Flogging. What’s the Diff?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This morning a reader, \u201curbanruralwitness,\u201d left the saddest comment on my post My Cup Runneth Over<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least more than 1 person looks at your blog,\u201d he or she wrote. \u201cUnlike me. Let me ask: Was it tough to start this blog? How did other people notice you? My blog is now a bud. A dead rotting bud.<\/p>\n

\u201cA dead rotting bud!\u201d! Poetic! And, like so much great poetry, it makes you want to kill yourself.<\/p>\n

My response to urbanrural was:<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, sometimes up to THREE people a day read my blog.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlogging is the most brutal thing since \u2026 flogging. My Actual Honest Opinion is that if you\u2019re blogging in the hopes of attracting a readership beyond your family and friends (and even then), forget it. There are 120 million blogs out there. How in the world is any one blogger\u2014who isn\u2019t a corporate blog, who isn\u2019t already famous, who isn\u2019t a freak expert in some tiny little informational niche\u2014supposed to rise above that solid wall of noise?\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about this subject a lot lately, because I\u2019ve been e-chatting with the president of the San Diego Christian Writer\u2019s Guild about maybe teaching a class at this year\u2019s SDWG conference (which I attended last year and wrote about in Humbled by Beginning Writers,<\/a> doncha know) on the how\u2019s and why\u2019s of blogging.<\/p>\n

The \u201cHow\u201d part I can do: Wake up. Caffeinate. Write blog post. Hit \u201cPublish\u201d button. Try not to obsess over your viewer stats. Fail at that. Don\u2019t know what I\u2019d talk about for the rest of the forty-five minutes, but that would do the job.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the \u201cWhy\u201d part of blogging where I get a little lost.<\/p>\n

Because you love to write? Meaning you appreciate and even relish the craft of writing? Then why start a blog, where you have to produce so much<\/em> writing you can\u2019t possibly properly attend to each piece?<\/p>\n

Because you want to be famous? Please. Talk about your one needle in 120 million haystacks.<\/p>\n

Because \u2026 you love to type?<\/p>\n

If you keep a blog, tell us why.<\/em> Love writing? Hope to become famous\u2014or to at least gather some folk around your soapbox? What gets you writing and publishing the content on your blog? What inspires<\/em> you to blog? Do tell! At the very least it\u2019ll help me with that class. Thanks!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"