VICTORS CORNER

If you are an aspiring writer, you should start a blog. Blogging offers you the easiest platform to showcase your writing talent at minimal or no cost at all.

Starting a blog involves paying for a domain name and a hosting service. But you don’t have to incur those costs if you can’t afford them now because there are free blogging platforms you can begin with.

When I started this blog, I used the free blogging plan on WordPress until recently when I had to upgrade to the paid personal plan. And I do not have any regrets about starting from the free plan because I used it to learn the ropes.

As a beginner, you can do the same if you want. The most important thing is that by so doing, you are creating an avenue to kickstart your writing adventure, thereby drawing you closer to your writing dreams.

Write on other people’s blogs or on yours

The thought of being a writer may be intimidating to you at first. But you have to start from somewhere by taking the first steps.

What better way to begin taking those little steps than by writing blog posts? You can start your blogging journey by writing posts on other people’s blogs or coming up with your own blog and writing posts on it yourself.

When you write on other people’s blogs, you are guest-posting and when you post on your own blog, you are ‘self-posting.’

As an aspiring writer, you can do both – write your own blog posts and guest-post on other people’s blogs. Either way, you are advancing your writing future.

Little by little, your blogging capacity will be expanded. And little by little you will start to nourish and empower the writer in you.

Want to empower the writer in you?

If you want to empower the writer in you, try blogging. And I mean that with all my heart.

Start blogging your voice out or you may never be heard as a writer. Blogging is a great way to begin empowering the writer in you.

To empower is give to give authority to something. And that’s what you do to the writer in you when you start writing blogs.

Blogging is such a friendly platform to invest your time on and to give exposure to your writing skill. Or hasn’t something been telling you that you could be a writer? Please don’t take that voice for granted.

That voice that has been telling you that you can write should be given a veritable platform to speak out. And I recommend blogging for that purpose.

Don’t stifle the voice of the writer in you. The world needs to hear your unique voice in a written form. So I say it again: blog out your voice.

Stop doubting it: there is a writer in you. Bring him or her out to the world through blogging.

Need a suggestion on the Content Management System to use?

There are many content management systems (CMS) you can choose from in order to kick-start your blogging journey. Medium, Wix, blogger, WordPress, etc.

Here is a screen-shot of the google result I got when I searched for the “top 10 CMS”:

For me and millions of other people on the blogosphere, WordPress is our preferred CMS. So I will gladly recommend it to you because I’ve found it to be a great platform to use.

If you didn’t already know, I have been hobby-blogging on WordPress for the last five years. And the experience has been encouraging.

It’s simple to use and easy to navigate, even if you are a complete novice like I was when I started my blogging journey.

In fact, you don’t have to be technically savvy to use WordPress. And no prior experience is required.

My take is that if you know how to use Microsoft Word processing software, you can blog on WordPress. All you have to do is to be dedicated to learning the ropes. It’s that easy.

Don’t you want the world to hear your voice and see you fly?

As an aspiring writer, blogging will give you a voice to speak to the world and wings to fly with your writing goals.

Blogging will be the voice you always knew you had but never knew how to use. And the wings you never knew you had let alone knowing how to fly.

It will be the voice to let out the feelings you have bottled for so long a time. And wings to fly to destinations your feet have never touched before, and back.

With blogging, you will see life in a new and inspiring light. You will feel a sense of significance sharing your story in your own way and in your own voice.

Blogging will give you the feeling that you are in control of your life. You can write whatever you want and post it whenever you want.

That’s pure freedom that you can hardly find in other areas of life. And many people are embracing it as hundreds of blogs are started daily around the world.

Will there be challenges as you blog?

I’m not saying you won’t have some challenges along the line, but I can assure you that the sense of fulfilment you will get will outweigh the challenges you will encounter.

You will face criticism from those that love you and from those who don’t. From those you know and from those you don’t know.

But you can choose to be bothered by the negative criticisms you will receive on your blog or you can choose the good thing about them and move on.

People will criticise you anyway, whatever you do (or don’t do). So there is nothing bad if you get criticised for starting a blog.

The only bad thing is quitting because of the criticisms you will receive. But if you don’t quit on your blogging mission, some of those who criticise you will become your admirers and supporters.

• Recommended: 4 Simple benefits of having a firm belief in your blog’s mission

I faced criticism too, but I’m still standing

When you start anything good, there are people who can’t but criticise you. That will also happen to you in blogging. But don’t be discouraged, because if you do, you have lost the game before it even got started.

In my own case, I was seriously criticised by some people that heard that I started a blog. I must say, I was really surprised at the discouraging words spoken to me by such people.

“Nobody will be interested in reading your write-ups,” some said.

“I give you six months, the blog will die,” another person dared to say.

Despite those mean words, I didn’t quit my blogging mission. Although, I must confess that the feeling was pretty bad at the beginning because some of the negative criticisms I received came from some of my acquaintances.

To some extent, their words got to me. But I’m glad I overcame the wave of discouragement that washed all over me after hearing those mindless negative attacks. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have even gotten to the point of sharing these few words of encouragement with you here in this post.

Look at me now, I am still here, blogging, five years after. I haven’t arrived yet, but I have left. And some of those harsh critics have now become my admirers.

What will blogging mean to you?

If you are an aspiring writer, you should start a blog. It will mean a lot to you if you do. And the only way to find out how valuable that decision can be is to get started.

I know blogging means different things to different people. While it is just a hobby to some people, some others make a living by blogging.

Aren’t you glad to hear that you can make money blogging? It is the dream of many people and who says you cannot achieve it?

Whether you blog for fun or make a living out of it, blogging will impact your life in more ways than one. I knew that from my own experience and those of countless other people.

For instance, I once heard one lady say, blogging is therapeutic for her. She seems to feel better about her life each time she publishes a blog post or does any of those other things blogging entails.

A granny blogger once bragged that she was blogging because she wants her grandchildren to read her written thoughts after she might have passed on. I am sure you don’t want to criticise her for saying so.

Just set your own blogging agenda and follow it. Even if you don’t have an agenda, just start writing. Nothing should stop you from doing so.

I will assure you that the picture will get clearer as you journey on.

Can blogging give you a voice and more?

For a start, blogging can be an avenue to hone your writing skill. But but it will definitely mean much more than that to you as you go further down the road.

Blogging has been an avenue to share my thoughts with the world – with anyone that cared to read. It has also become my voice on the blogosphere.

As you read my thoughts in writing, you know I’m speaking to you.

My voice may be imperfect, but you will still hear me. As you read my posts, you hear me speak to you, your friend or your family or even your enemies.

Both the ones you love and the ones you hate. My words ring true for some of them. So you do not only read my posts, you share them with other people as well.

I may not see you physically, but you still hear my voice speak through my blog. This blog is my platform.

You know I’m not bragging; just stating the obvious.

My post is my voice. I’m glad you are there reading. Your blog can give you a voice too.

If I had not started this blog, you probably would not know that I exist, let alone hear my voice. So I can boldly say: my blog has introduced me to you and to the world.

Don’t you like it?

What blogging will teach you about personal development

Blogging and personal development do go together. And so far, that’s the part I loved most about blogging – developing myself.

I have discovered that blogging has become a tool for personal development for me, especially in honing my writing skills.

And that was the second reason I started blogging. To develop my inborn natural writing talent.

Just like you, I have always felt I could write. But feeling is one thing and putting the feeling to pen and paper (or punching away on the laptop) is another.

Transferring what’s on your mind to the computer and sharing it with the world is typically what you do in blogging. You write down your thoughts and publish them to the world in form of posts for them to read.

You also share your knowledge so that someone out there can learn something from you. It won’t matter if you are paid or not, because not everyone is in it for money.

This is not to say that you cannot make money blogging. You can because I know you have read tons of posts from those who say they are making some dough from blogging.

(I hope to get there someday). But what I am doing here right now is to encourage you to take to blogging if you feel writing is your thing.

For many years, I brandished reading and writing as my favourite hobbies. But while I did pretty well with reading, writing was not taken with the seriousness it equally deserved.

With blogging, I can say that the story has changed for the better. I have made a serious commitment to writing through this blog, and my game is improving by the day.

With over two hundred thousand words already published on this blog, (excluding a number of guest postings I made and the 2,500+ words contained in this post), I finally have veritable evidence to support my long-held notion that my hobbies include writing.

You too should get started; start blogging. Start writing.

By your writing, you will become a source of light that drives away the darkness in people’s lives and brings them into marvellous light.

But while blogging you won’t be just a writer, you will be a teacher and a learner at the same time. People will learn from you when they read your posts, and you will learn from others when you read theirs.

There are many awesome things I have learnt from starting a blog. I’m convinced you will learn a lot too if you start one.

Blogging will help you cultivate the discipline required of a writer. It will help you to wear the writer’s mindset. Is that not good for you? Or,

Don’t you want to be read across the world?

When you blog, people read you from across the globe. You share your awesome thoughts with the world – with people across the oceans and people behind the mountains spread amongst the seven continents.

These are people whom you have never met (and may never meet in a lifetime). But you will impact them with the written words on your blog.

They give you feedback in the form of likes, comments and emails. And you gladly respond to them one after another.

As you interact with them daily, you will begin to form a special bond with them. You will be recognised as a bona fide member of the blogging community.

When that happens, you will finally begin to realise that you are no longer that unknown person tucked away in your little corner somewhere on earth before you started a blog.

The easiest way to global citizenship

Take it from me: blogging will introduce you to the world and open up the world to you.

People will know you exist through your blog. And you will also come to know many people both online and offline.

You will become a global citizen making your own contributions to knowledge and experience, just by sitting behind your laptop, punching away the damn keys and hitting the magical button labelled ‘publish’ at period intervals.

The saying that the world is a global village will finally begin to make sense to you because you will feel you are now part of it. And it’s true!

You will look at your blog analytics and see that someone from Australia, Europe, The Americas or Africa or Asia has visited your blog.

From all corners of the earth, people throng to your blog. And your dream is turning into reality.

You will begin to wonder, “How on earth is this possible?” Then you will immediately realise you are now a blogger, sharing your life and talent of writing with the world.

The whole feeling is not something I can completely describe. I would rather have you experience it first-hand.

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So my friend, if you ever want to be a writer, start blogging is the best tip I can give to you. It is a great way to hone your writing skills and have you change the world at the same time.

Don’t wait until you are perfect before you get started. Start today, right now because I know you can do it.

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