What drives people to blog?

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The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That’s almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click — whether on their site or someone else’s. And that’s nearly half a million of whom it can be said, as Bob Dylan did of Hurricane Carter: “It’s my work he’d say, I do it for pay.”

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124026415808636575.html
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Well, I guess I qualify as a blogger. Why do we do it? Hard to generalize, as each has its own. I would say that I do it to share information quickly and easily to friends, family, and anyone else who cares to read. I have kept a journal since high school, 1995 (yea, I know, kinda gay) but I did that to reflect on what I was doing, what I was feeling, and try to grow from that. I never expected someone else to read it. I would write my feelings, my ideas, and tried to more deeply understand myself. I had an ex-girlfriend read them when I was at work one day in New york, and at first it upset me, she would reference parts in some logs that she didn’t approve of, but then I realized. what do I have to hide?

May as well make my journal public. For those who care to read. But not only for those to read, but to document it for myself to look back upon. I live a “light life” now – traveling a lot, moving. I don’t want to bring a library of books with me. And if it was a secret stash of journals – it would have gotten lost, read, and published by now anyway.

So I blog,

1) for myself really. Selfish, yes. But its easier to keep it online than to carry a book around with me. And cheaper, I just pay $10usd/year for my domain and I use blogger.com for my free blog account.

2) share with family and friends. This blog really launched once I quit my day job in NYC and was moving to Cali. so many friends asking for updates. Many phone calls and emails repeating the same stories.

3) self and business promotion – sure, why not get my name out there, and the stories in my life. Maybe it will get picked up. And I can plug the websites and businesses I build and interact with.

4) some income – sure you can see my google adsense advertisements at the top and left of this blog. really don’t generate much income at all, but took 5 minutes to add the code there.

So those are my main reasons for bloggin’. Keep on trucking, and keep on blogging. I enjoy it, and if one of these posts inspires or intrigues 1 person on the internet, its fulfilled.