What exactly is Blogging?

Simply put, a blog is an online journal or diary of some sort. The page you are viewing right now is part of a blog. You’ll notice that there are links to other pages in the blog on the top menu, and links to the newest posts and topic categories in the right side bar area.

Originally, blogs were strictly personal journals (and many still are), or were used for political or social commentary by the author.   More recently, they have gained popularity with news organizations and large businesses, and also with internet marketers.

To define a few terms,  “blogging” refers to the act of writing a blog,  a “blogger”  is the person who writes or posts to the blog, and “the blogosphere”  is a term coined to refer to the general “world” of blogs and blogging.

Blogging is helpful to internet marketers because it gives them a chance to gain many of the benefits of email marketing with none of the hassles.  It also helps them to gain customer confidence and loyalty.  A blog that allows comments can be used to get customer feedback, and even to allow customers to ask for new products.

Starting a blog is also the easiest and least expensive way to start an internet business. If you have special knowledge or expertise in some subject, you can start a blog on the topic, ad some pay-per-click (PPC) ads to your blog, and as soon as you begin to get some Traffic to your blog, you’ll also probably get some clicks on the links in the PPC ads, resulting in *revenue* for you, the blogger.

Well-established bloggers who have built up their reputation in a certain area can earn a tidy sum this way, doing nothing but posting the PPC ads and some occasional product endorsements using affiliate links to generate commissions on any resulting sales.   Even a brand new blog in a “hot” topic area can expect to get some quick attention, traffic, and clicks.

You can also use your blog to build an email list of subscribers, whom you can then notify every time you make a new Post to the blog.  And you can also send them “special offers” of new products related to the topic of your blog, and/or endorsements of products that you like and want to promote as an affiliate.

So, to answer the original “what is blogging” question a different way, blogging is the hot new tool for promoting any product or service online, building traffic to a website, increasing sales and customer satisfaction, and/or starting your first online business.