3 influencers for blogging

Blogging has been around for a few years, but I was wondering what really influenced me to start blogging only now.

Here are my 3 influencers for blogging:

1. Stand Out and get noticed:

                        A few months ago, I read a book called Stand Out by Dorie Clark. The experiences from the book transformed my perspective for the good. In this book, the author clearly highlights that keeping our heads down and working hard on the job alone is just not enough to be recognized as experts. Instead, one should capitalize on one’s unique perspectives and knowledge and inspire others to take action, thereby creating an audience to follow the ideas.

                     In her inspiring book, she also interviews 50 thought leaders from various fields and clearly depicts that expressing their own interests and opinions to a wider audience led them to find their breakthrough idea and be recognized. One of the examples that really motivated me was personal finance advisor and entrepreneur,  Ramit Sethi's life story. Ramit Sethi, started his personal finance blog  I will teach you to be rich, as a hobby from his dorm room in 2004. His free blog gained momentum across the audience and soon had a huge follower base (more than 1 million+ readers a day), so he started a business around it by selling paid content, courses and then eventually a New York Times Best-Seller, I will Teach You to be Rich.

                  I agree with Dorie’s thought that instead of sharing a few words on Social media, organizing your thoughts and posting it as a blog or on Quora would benefit more people.

2. Educate, Inspire and Entertain:

                  Businessman, Owner of Dallas Mavericks and self-made billionaire, Mark Cuban, regularly shares his thoughts on his blog blogmavericks. Mark Cuban, grew from a bartender to a billionaire over a short period of time. He has no business objectives for his blog but he writes regularly just to educate the audience by sharing his perspective. He inspires young audience by sharing his real life experiences. When a high profile businessman like him could find time to blog and also find value in it, why shouldn't I set my foot on it?

3. Generating a Passive Income:

                     Pat Flynn, through his podcast Smart Passive Income, highlights clear strategies to make passive income. Although making passive income is a dream, it is indeed achievable through online sources that can be scaled-up for wealth generation, unlike trading time for money. One other reason that he influenced me was that he does not provide short term tips and tricks to get rich or succeed, instead he shares details of his personal experiences and provides a clear way forward. He talks about the strategies or platforms that worked for him and how one should approach it, as well as areas where he failed and lessons from those failures. He suggests 3 major platforms to start the journey: Blog, videos or podcast. At this time, blog interests me more. I also learned multiple ways to monetize the blog - Google Adsense for advertising on the blog and using Amazon affiliates program to get commision on the products I recommend. These are some of the simple strategies to start with and easy to apply as well.

"Blogging is not a rocket science, it’s about being yourself, and putting what you have into it"

Head over to Resources page for the complete list of books and podcast that influenced me.

P.S: If you have skimmed through this, here’s a 15-second summary:

My influencing factors to start blogging are to educate and inspire people by sharing my experiences, thereby making my thoughts ‘Stand Out’, while generating a passive income that provides a motivation to continue.