I guess I am as guilty as anyone for this, after all I have written enough on the topic myself, but it gets me down than so much emphasis in blogging is on the money side now. Only yesterday I was reading how people should not bother starting a blog as they are unlikely to make much money at it. Is money the only reason to blog? No way!
It’s a lot like music. There is a pleasure in creating and performing music, regardless of if you get paid well. Yes there are a ton of people wishing to become rock stars, but many many more who will never be and are happy despite that. Does every musician dream of being a rock star? No. Does every blogger dream of making big money? I don’t think so.
OK, easy for me to say, I make a decent living from blogs. In fact though I blogged long before thinking I could make money doing it. To begin with I had pigeon hold blogs as being fun, niche, sidelines of webmastering. Not real money spinners like affiliate sites or ecommerce, etc. It was Darren Rowse who inspired me to try Adsense. So for years I had been blogging “just because”.
Through blogging I have made some great friends, too many to list (and I would risk an argument when I inevitably missed someone out!). Some of these people I have met in real life, others only over email and skype. For this reason alone I would continue blogging if for any reason I couldn’t make money from it.
As Ryan says, making friends could be a critical success factor.
The funny thing is, when you enjoy the process of blogging and make friends, without any expectation of pay off, you become better at it and see more success.
If you are not making big bucks right now, just relax and know that blogging can be its own reward.