{"id":1193,"date":"2008-07-09T22:41:57","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T03:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/?p=1193"},"modified":"2009-01-25T13:15:06","modified_gmt":"2009-01-25T18:15:06","slug":"blogging-is-a-thankless-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/07\/09\/blogging-is-a-thankless-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogging is a Thankless Job"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s face it &#8211; blogging is a thankless job.<\/p>\n<p>Mostly. For most of us, that is. Unless it&#8217;s your job to blog (and good on you if it is, you lucky dog), or you derive enough money from your blog&#8217;s advertising that you can &#8220;blog to live&#8221; (which kind of makes it your job as well), then when you blog, there&#8217;s no direct compensation for your effort &#8211; and for good blogs, that can involve a lot of effort.<\/p>\n<p>Research, writing, reviewing, keeping ideas ready for posting regularly&#8230; there&#8217;s a lot more to it than just sitting down and spewing out some thoughts. It takes <em>effort<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>And for the most part, it is thankless. Oh sure, if you&#8217;ve got a large enough reader base you might get lots of comments and emails saying &#8220;thank you&#8221; or &#8220;I loved your article&#8221; or, if the reader is particularly clever, &#8220;I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.&#8221; But more often than not, even if your posts get lots of visitors, very, very few will comment. So like I said, it&#8217;s a thankless job.<\/p>\n<p>Sort of.<\/p>\n<p>Because it occurs to me that people who blog often don&#8217;t do it for the thanks. Like great artists in a way, they blog because they enjoy blogging &#8211; there&#8217;s a strange sort of satisfaction in writing a good article and knowing that even if no one comments on it, Google will find it and someone will come along and get value from it (someday). It&#8217;s almost like leaving your mark on the Internet.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, that&#8217;s how I often feel &#8211; and goodness knows I don&#8217;t get anything back from this blog (no advertising). So let me ask &#8211; why do you blog?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s face it &#8211; blogging is a thankless job. Mostly. For most of us, that is. Unless it&#8217;s your job to blog (and good on you if it is, you lucky dog), or you derive enough money from your blog&#8217;s advertising that you can &#8220;blog to live&#8221; (which kind of makes it your job as&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/07\/09\/blogging-is-a-thankless-job\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Blogging is a Thankless Job<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[101,100],"class_list":["post-1193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-blogging","tag-opinion","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-jf","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1150,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/06\/06\/blogging-is-hard\/","url_meta":{"origin":1193,"position":0},"title":"Blogging is HARD","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Blogging is HARD. No, seriously, it is. Now, before you brush me off, thinking that \"you just write a few paragraphs every so often and that's it,\" let me assure you - there is quite a bit more to it than that (or rather, there has to be more to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;personal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2008\/06\/blogging-for-teens.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1882,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2009\/04\/09\/communication-and-programming\/","url_meta":{"origin":1193,"position":1},"title":"Communication and Programming","author":"Keith Survell","date":"April 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Programming is all about communicating - communicating with the computer, and with other people. So it follows that to be a good programmer, you need to be a good communicator, too.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;My Opinion&quot;","block_context":{"text":"My Opinion","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/my-opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":401,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/02\/23\/who-the-hell-do-i-think-i-am\/","url_meta":{"origin":1193,"position":2},"title":"Who the Hell Do I Think I Am?","author":"Keith Survell","date":"February 23, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"From the ever-popular (or ever infamous) IMAO comes this lovely quiz.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;personal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":561,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/06\/29\/have-i-mentioned-i-love-my-job\/","url_meta":{"origin":1193,"position":3},"title":"Have I mentioned I love my job?","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 29, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I think I've mentioned this before, but I love my job.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;personal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":690,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/12\/13\/top-10-system-administrator-truths\/","url_meta":{"origin":1193,"position":4},"title":"Top 10 System Administrator Truths","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"\"I figure with enough time and effort, anyone could be a System Administrator. Really, it's not hard, it just takes practice, methodology, and trial and error. A lot of trial and error. \"","rel":"","context":"In &quot;tech&quot;","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":884,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2007\/05\/20\/graduating-college\/","url_meta":{"origin":1193,"position":5},"title":"Graduating College","author":"Keith Survell","date":"May 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I finally went back and finished the last 2 courses keeping me from my college degree - and in return, I got a new digital camera! Yay!","rel":"","context":"In &quot;personal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}