Introduction
Believe it or not, blogging is still a great hobby and is one that can offer you the chance to flex your creative potential.
It’s still as relevant as ever, even in an age where we can easily absorb information through video mediums such as Vimeo and YouTube.
That’s because for most people, they still prefer to absorb information through a text-based format such as an online blog or by reading books.
As well as that, some blogs are ran so successfully that they make their owners 5-6 figure incomes every month: that’s total financial freedom for anyone who didn’t get that.
We’re not saying everyone will have that kind of success, and to be honest, it’s better going into a blog that you’re passionate about as the writing will come more naturally.
Some of the most popular blogs include lifestyle blogs, food blogs, travel blogs, and basically anything else that can center around the person to give a unique perspective.
So, with all that said, we know blogging is an excellent hobby but let’s look at some of the key reasons of why you might want to get into it.
Think Through Your Fingers: 6 Reasons Why Blogging Is a Great Hobby
Before we get into the reasons why we love blogging, let’s address another question that people commonly ask: is blogging a hobby?
Just to allay your fears, blogging can be a hobby provided you’re doing it for your own enjoyment — that’s why we always advocate writing about a passion as it means you can combine doing something for fun with potentially making money further down the line.
1. Blogging is cheap
Unlike other hobbies, blogging is extremely cheap and only costs as much as your monthly hosting subscription.
Yes, you can add “nice-to-haves” such as a CDN (content delivery network that speeds up your site loading time) but they are far from essential when you’re just starting out.
In fact, some convenient hosting solutions are offered from DreamHost who handles linking the popular WordPress service (where you type your blogs) to the hosting server itself (on DreamHost).
This means you don’t have to worry about the technical side of getting WordPress Installed on your website, DreamHost handles it all themself and better yet, you have the choice of monthly payments rather than having to pay the full years cost up front.
Aside from that, the only other blogging costs are optional extras like premium plugins or paid themes — again, they absolutely aren’t necessary and in fact some of the best blogs are those that are very plain and use white backgrounds for improved visibility.
2. Blogging can give you financial freedom
Blogging is a great hobby but it can be an even better way to escape your 9-5 existence and could enable you to spend more time with your family.
In fact, no other business is quite as safe as blogging in terms of the funds needed to get it going against how low risk it is.
You can basically blog around your work shifts and on your days off; it may take a little while to get going at first but after a year or two putting the time in to write, you should be making a good bit of extra money on top of your normal salary.
Primarily, display ads are used to monetize your traffic — you’ll be paid a set portion of money per thousand views (revenue per mille), however, some people also use affiliate links (paid links) where they’re paid a portion of the sale amount for whatever it is the viewer has purchased.
It’s not unrealistic to expect an extra $1000-2000 per month after the first twelve months of blogging provided you’re implementing correct SEO and targeting popular keywords.
3. Blogging can improve your literary skills
As a hobby, blogging involves lots of typing, wordplay, spelling, and punctuation which all adds up to improving your literary skills.
This is extremely important for making legible content that reads well, and over time, you’ll start to notice you get much better in all the aforementioned areas.
You’ll may even start to dream about words and your brain will pull them out of the ether leaving you stumped at how you even knew them.
Lastly, since you’ll be writing through a keyboard, you may even master the skill of touch typing where you don’t need to look at the letters you’re pressing and you should also notice your typing speed dramatically increases too.
These are all transferrable skills in many jobs or career paths making it an especially potent hobby in terms of overall productiveness.
4. Blogging gives you a goal
Having a goal might seem like a really underrated idea, however, it’s often found that people who have something to work towards in their life feel far more satisfied and are usually more motivated to try new things.
You don’t even need a huge goal — we recommend setting small “stepping stone” goals which are smaller tasks to help you get to where you eventually want to be.
For example, you might not be able to produce several good articles per week for your blog at first as you’ll probably need to find a structure that suits you best, however, over time this should gradually get better.
This is where setting small goals can help i.e. trying to write one to two excellent articles per week rather than trying to rush through several weak ones.
You’ll probably find that some days even those small tasks are difficult but once you find your flow you’ll feel much more satisfied than those times where you had nothing to work towards.
5. Blogging can help you express your passions
If you really enjoy something but have a hard time communicating it then blogging is probably the best way to put it into words that mean something.
There’s no pressure or time limit; you can literally sit back and spend hours (or even days) working on the perfect post for your audience.
For example, maybe you really love living off the grid and want to tell people about getting in touch with nature.
Or perhaps you’re a passionate triathlon athlete who loves digging deep on those last few miles and want to spread the word about what all the buzz is.
Blogging is a hobby that becomes a conduit for our feelings, thoughts, emotions, and can help scratch the itch for giving back to other people (through information).
6. Blogging can help you network and make friends
When you create a blog, it’s inevitable that at some point you’ll find an audience of dedicated followers who love everything you write about.
They’ll be laymen, enthusiasts, and even working professionals from a variety of backgrounds who will interact and even leave comments on your blog for you to respond to.
You may even find other blog owners who follow your posts and may at some point suggest networking or communicating with each other to team up.
This can be a great way to build your blog as you’ll both be able to share your expertise with each other and even utilise some special techniques such as link building.
Whilst all this is going on you’ll more than likely be building a strong bond with that person and may even become good friends over time.
We think that finding friends through a passion can help you meet some really great people who are easy to talk to especially since you share similarities with each other.
Conclusion
To recap, we now know that blogging is an excellent hobby and one that can offer you many benefits such as improving your writing skills, developing transferrable skills such as setting goals, can help you meet and make new friends, and can even replace your job in just a year if you do it right.
Better yet, it’s relatively risk-free and does not require significant capital to be invested to get you going.
Literally, you could be on benefits and still afford to produce a blog which is why we think there’s no excuse not to give it a go.
As always, if you enjoyed our article, please bookmark our homepage.
You can also check out other passions and pastimes on our massive list of hobbies which we’re sure will give you further inspiration to invest your time in things you enjoy.
