11. Let your friends and family know you’re still alive

Seriously who has time to call up every single friend and relative nowadays. If it’s not instant it’s too much trouble. It has become too much effort to even Tab between different applications (scary human future scenario of Wall-E comes to mind).

However, if you have a blog, interested family members or friends can find out what you’ve been up to easily. Sure Facebook and Myspace profiles can do the same thing, but they’re mostly based on quickie updates only. A blog is where you can sort out your thoughts and present a more thoughtful side of yourself.

10. Keep your literacy level up

In fact, it keeps the literacy level up for the entire planet. It’s really scary when quite a few people at work can’t even write a proper sentence anymore. “Your” instead of “You’re” anyone? Sites like Twitter even promotes illiteracy by limiting thoughts to 140 characters. Shakespeare is likely rolling over in his grave.

When you blog, you can certainly write in net-speak or spam net acronyms. However, the longer you blog, the better you will naturally get at writing. Isn’t that the same for everything else one does? You will need to read large amounts of material to keep your ideas fresh and plentiful. And in many cases, writing properly is even a turn-on for the mind.

9. Learning by teaching

When you are writing about a particular topic, you will naturally learn more about it. Some of you may well be a fountain of knowledge, but there will always be new information that you have yet to uncover. There are even bloggers who are completely new to a category, yet sound completely confident and knowledgeable just by doing extensive research.

By teaching others through your writing, you will have an increased sense of purpose and become more eager to learn. Enriching yourself at a much quicker pace than you would otherwise. Want to learn all about the endangered species in Africa? Don’t just read about it, blog about it.

8. Slow down time itself

Time speeds up when you’re having fun, and time speeds up when you’re getting old. In fact, we never seem to have enough time no matter what. If we can attach a fixed monetary rate to time, it would make our crazy oil prices seem like nothing. Blogging can help to keep your thoughts organized and it helps to keep things in perspective.

Having something interesting that you do regularly every week will put a scale marker on time itself. Think of time as a slippery greasy rope, except now with blogging, you can put knots on it to keep better track of your time sense. Daily blog postings are especially good for this.

7. Stress relieve before you kill yourself

This may sound exaggerated but there are many people that does not know how to prevent dangerous stress build up. Yes, even millionaire entrepreneurs or brilliant academics. One of the major reasons for stress is the lack of an emotional outlet. Sure you may be able to always think of a solution to get through difficult situations one after another, but where does all the accumulated frustration and anxiety go?

You may not notice it, but stress does build up over time. You may not go crazy anytime soon, but why not let out some steam and live a few years longer? When you blog, you can complain and be angry all you want to an audience. You may get idiotic commenters of course, but nothing a few bans won’t fix. It’s like shouting out into a valley or an ocean at the top of your lungs. Well, almost as good.

6. Force yourself to sit still for a moment

When you are forced to do 12 hours of work in 8 hours everyday, sitting still for even a short moment is unlikely. I don’t mean sitting on that ultra expensive corporate chair, I mean really sitting down and thinking about your life for a moment. A calming session of introspection.

Questions like: Where am I going with my life? Am I doing what I really want to do? If not, how can I make the goal and the journey more pleasant? Am I really far off track?

You’ll be surprised at how good it feels to really stop for a few moments now and then. There’s also no such thing as “too late”. Since you have the power to write and the power to create individual action every day, you can create new opportunities for yourself. Won’t be the same opportunities, but definitely new ones.

5. Helping people and making the world a better place

One of the reason blogging works is because anyone can write anything, and it will be useful to someone out there. With billions of people currently living on the planet, there are a crazy amount of different personalities and scenarios. Back in school, when you say something mean to another kid, there is a good chance that it will really hurt the other person’s feelings. Or when you cheer on someone, it might empower that person to reach new heights.

With blogging, multiply that power by a million. Your audience is now the world and if your share your experiences and positive attitude, it will allow many others to do the same thing. And like anything with the internet, it is infectious. Blog a smile, save the world. Sorry, couldn’t resist. =)

4. Make side money, lots of it

Lets face it, who wouldn’t want an extra bit of spending money for that new shiny gadget or the latest trendy purse. Once you start up your blog, you can start earning decent money in weeks or even days. If you get good traffic, it can get up to a 6-figure income, it all depends on how much time and thought you put into it.

There are many approaches to this, some common methods are Google Adsense, affiliate marketing, and of course, the Donation button. If you don’t feel like cluttering up your blog with ads, then a small amount of affiliate text links and having a donation button will do just fine. And if you’re feeling particularly charitable, it could even be 100% donated to a charity. Mugs, T-shirts and branded Snowglobes. there are many other ways to make some blog money without annoying your readers too.

3. Feel the sharing love

When you own a blog, it is like having your own royal mint. For outbound links that is. Every link that you link to others is generating additional value to the link destination. The more popular your blog is, the more valuable your links are.

When was the last time you went up to someone and said, “here, share in my money.” With your blog mint, you now have the power to add value to other people’s lives without taking away from your own. Far from it, sharing link love will eventually gain you return links, increased relevancy reading for your readers, and maybe even a few new friends. It’s definitely a win-win situation. Not many places where your actions can benefit everyone at the same time. Feel the love.

2. No more traffic jams

Have you ever thought that your daily commute to work is getting pretty ridiculous? Not sure about you, but sitting in traffic for 2-4 hours every day just isn’t my idea time well spent. Say it’s an average of 3 hours in traffic every day, that’s 15 hours a week. 780 hours in a year. 3900 hours in 5 years, or 487 work days of 9-5. Wow, think about how much a person can actually get done in that time, if they aren’t stuck in traffic that is.

As you grow your blog, you will eventually be able to work from home. You will become much more knowledgeable in many different subjects, creating more opportunities for making money. Being rich and famous may not be your end goal, but not having to worry about money will free you to do what you really want in life.

1. Everyone else is doing it

One more point I must add: Everyone else is doing it. In 2005, 1 blog was created every second. In 2006, 2 blogs per second. And fast forward to 2008, there are new blog posts on 900,000+ blogs every day. Whether you like it or not, blogging is going stronger than ever. Sure, you don’t care if everyone else jumps off the cliff right? But when 77% of active Internet users read blogs, there has to be some sort of good reason in there somewhere.

So why not give it a try, it’s free at blog hosting services such as Wordpress or Blogger. If you don’t like it, you lose a few hours. On the other hand, if you do like it, you may just gain something very valuable.

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