Donna Fox

As a condition of her employment my assistant is required to ask me a question each day about the business.  Here was her question today:

"So do you just blog on One website or is it several, and that’s really just for the publicity…correct?"

Which gave me the opportunity to tell her about all the reasons why I blog, and I came up with seven of them.

1. To leverage a connection socially and personally with my family, friends, customers, clients, readers, followers (that word always makes me feel like a cult leader), fans, and anyone else who bothers to stop by.  This is what I do on this blog you’re reading now, which is a mix of me personally and professionally (but mostly professionally).

2. to have a website to post long messages for promotions, so we only send a short email to our list members.  You can see an example of this on my "corporate" site By Special Arrangements.

3. to promote affiliate products.  What better way to recommend a product you like than with a blog post? Then anytime in the future someone has a need you can send them to the post that includes not only your reasons for recommending it, but an affiliate link so you can make money too.  See an example I did on this blog for Roboform

4. To get advertizing income.  I have a number of blogs where the purpose of them is to generate revenue from adsense and banner ads.

5. To make something a tax deduction.  When I blog about video games it makes my video game purchases, rentals, consoles, xbox live membership, magazine subscriptions and gamecard memberships all tax deductible.  (at least that’s true when I combine this strategy with an income generating one like #3 and #4.)

6. For publicity.  I’m using a blog at Why She Buys to establish my expertise at marketing to women.

7. For search engine love.  When you blog frequently with relevant keywords you get ranked higher in the search engines because your website is seen as an authority on a topic.  See my Credit Millionaire blog where I’m using weekly autoposting to make sure my blog posts are published regularly.

Oh, and here’s another one, so I guess i have eight.  To poll your audience and get opinions and ideas on a topic.  So I ask you, dear readers… why do YOU blog?