I think it’s no secret that I love blogging. Obviously, I have this personal finance blog but before this, I had a myriad of other blogs (and online journals before blogging existed).
With all of this experience, I definitely wanted to contribute to the Beginner Blogger Challenge that Passive Income To Retire is hosting.

How long have you been blogging?

I have been blogging officially since April 2010. Before that, like I mentioned, I had online journals and other blogs that I dabbled in. Here is where I’ve been:

• Open Diary – my first online journal when I was 14
• Deadjournal – had one there when I was 15 when Livejournal was invite only
• Livejournal – Kept this one up from when I was 16 until about a year and half ago
• Xanga – this was my “public” journal while I was in college
• Blogspot – I had a large array of these. Here are some of them: a photo blog, a cooking blog, and most recently an engineering blog.
• WordPress – I started a restaurant review blog first but later merged that into a lifestyle blog that I’m still trying (and failing) to keep up. And here I am on my personal finance blog!

I think my real forray into blogging started on WordPress with my restaurant review blog. It came to me actually when I was at the dentist listening to the audiobook of Julia & Julia. I loved food but I already failed at a cooking blog since I’m not very adventurous with cooking – but I did love to eat out! So off I went and started that which kept me happy for awhile.

When I changed it into a lifestyle blog, I tried to drive some traffic to it but I realized that lifestyle blogs have a really hard time becoming popular since it’s obviously not focused to a specific niche. I subscribed to hundreds of blogs because it became almost my obsession to read what else was out there – and in doing so, found the personal finance community. Just a couple months ago, I decided to start my own PF blog. If I loved reading about it so much and working with my finances, it just made sense to start writing about it!

Why did you start blogging?

I loved to write and started blogging as a way to keep up my writing skills while I was no longer at school. In my field (Computer Science), we don’t do a lot of writing and I started feeling rusty every time I sat down to draft an email. It was pretty sad actually.

How long did it take you to earn $100 (if you have already earned $100)?

Hate to say this but I haven’t earned $100 yet. I haven’t even earned $1 yet. I should start looking into generating income but I’m blogging more for myself, for fun and to participate in the community. Generating any side income would be great and hopefully I can move in that direction in the near future.

What is (at least) one thing you wish someone had told you before you started blogging?

Choose a niche! Lifestyle blogs are a lot of fun but honestly, the majority of people sadly don’t really care about what you write. If you want to write one, do it for yourself and if you can write really well, it might gain popularity (there are a few of them that are definitely popular). However, it makes more sense just to find a niche that you are interested in and move in that direction.

I decided to choose personal finance for young professionals – just because that’s where I am in my life. If you’re thinking of starting a blog, think about what you know best – or even what you want to learn. If it’s something that interests you, you’ll be able to write about it in a way that will interest others as well.

Most importantly, just have fun! In my opinion, the best part of blogging is the community – maybe I got lucky with the personal finance community, but there are some great people here and I’m so glad I get to be a part of it.