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Internet Marketing Coach
An UnMeme - What I Expect from my Blog
January 10th, 2008 | 8 commentsI was recently tagged by Terry Heath, a great guy and a friend, for a meme titled “What do you Expect from your Blog.”
However, for various reasons I’ve decided to stop taking part in memes. This has nothing to do with Terry or his meme, but memes in general.
So I’m going to do something similar to RT’s Unmeme, which Stephen adopted as well, and take part without tagging others.
So the question is: What do you Expect from your Blog?
This one is probably over my head because to be honest with you I don’t expect anything. Terry is actually the guy who installed WordPress on this very blog back in February (I think.) It sat dormant for a few months with a couple throw-away posts on it until I got somewhat serious with it somewhere around April 07.
My initial intentions for this blog were to provide a way to express my own Internet marketing musings, as I had just began to become very comfortable with the whole Internet Marketing thing and I was starting to make some decent money.
I also knew it would be an easy way to keep the SE spiders coming with frequent content updates and an easy way to retain readers, as opposed to a normal, static website.
This blog is nowhere close to being my main source of income. As a matter of fact, I make VERY little money from this blog. I guess it’s somewhat of an ego thing 
It helps brand my name and I get to help others at the same time.
So I’m not sure if I could really answer the question “What do I expect from this blog?” because I don’t really expect anything.
Obviously I want the traffic to continue to increase and I believe it will, but we all want that. As far as goals though, I don’t think of my blog as a business model, as many bloggers do (unfortunately.)
So many bloggers concentrate far too much time on one or two blogs and 95% of the time those blogs never amount to a steady income, and those that do normally take alot of time to do so.
So the sum it all up; I guess I could say the only expectation I have for my blog is to serve as a valuable resource to those of you who read it. If I make some money along the way, great. However, that’s not my sole intention.
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10th January, 2008 at 7:54 pm
I’m in the same boat Josh. I don’t really expect anything from my blog either. As a matter of fact as Forrest “just felt like runnin”, I “felt like writin”.
However, the fact that you don’t expect much from your blog could be reasons why I love it here. The fact that you DO take the time out of your day and write your thoughts and musings IS the value. Your a sharp guy and from what I have seen from the WF and articles around the web for over a year now your a helleva marketer too.
That’s more than enough to keep me coming back each day man. Hard finding people like you these days. Just to let you know, it is appreciated man.
Best,
Ruck
10th January, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Josh,
You are an incredible asset to some of us newer people in the industry and don’t think we don’t appreciate it. You have helped my on many issues already and once again THANKS! Your new e-book on e-zines is a great resource by the way..
I noticed Ruck responded above. His blog and forum are another awesome resource. In fact, I found Ruck through you.
11th January, 2008 at 12:14 am
LOL…I got tagged on this meme as well…and believe it or not, my response would be almost exactly the same as yours, Josh. I have ZERO expectations for my blog. I have almost no subscribers…I post once a month…and I actually think I’m better at stirring things up in comments than I am at writing. In other words, I am behaving the opposite way I should behave if I wanted to be accomplishing something with it.
11th January, 2008 at 5:47 am
I think sometimes we don’t see what we expect from our efforts until those expectations are no longer met. From what I know of you Josh, relationships are important to you. Your blog shows that in the comfortable feeling Ruck mentioned, as well as your choices for topics and the general way you treat those of us lucky enough to be called your friends.
But if none of your readers were interested in sharing ideas, commenting, or just chatting, would you keep blogging after a month? Six months? A year? If your only comments were spam, would you give up? If it didn’t help the SERP of your products and MFA sites, would you keep blogging?
If any of these things have something to do with why you blog, then you do have expectations. There is nothing wrong with expectations. All of our actions are driven by something we want . . . but what you want from your blog may not be clear to you.
11th January, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Hi Josh,
Well your blog is a total success! It is definitely a valuable resource to me.
You’re spot on when you say that too many bloggers think of their blogs as their business model. When I started my blog, it wasn’t to earn money at all. I’ve been sucked into the idea of making money online now, but I’ve come to realise that it won’t be through my blog.
I’m about to launch a second blog, which may earn a little more (it’s not targeted at such a technical crowd), but I know it won’t earn a lot either. Both are because I want to write on these topics. But behind the scenes I’m starting to work on a MFA niche site, with a view to actually making some money (if I can pull it off!).
11th January, 2008 at 5:23 pm
@ Ruck - Thanks for the great compliments. You’re providing some good info over at your blog as well.
@ Scott - Thanks and no problem at all. I always try to help where I can. When I first began I found that alot of people were annoyed when I asked questions, as dumb as my questions may have seemed to those people, so I always try my best to do the complete opposite.
@ Chuck - I saw you got tagged as well. I guess we’re a few odd bloggers. You really should write more though. Your blog looks great and you’re a great writer.
@ Terry - You’re a deep guy
and you’re right. I didn’t think of it that way. I suppose I do have expectations for this blog. If all the great guys and gals who support me suddenly disappeared I would be pretty disappointed. If the blog suddenly stopped receiving traffic I would be very disappointed. I guess there are some expectations that I just don’t think about, good point. Once again, I hope you were offended in any way that I didn’t tag others. It’s a great meme, I’m just trying to get away from memes in general.
@ Stephen - Thanks, all of you who subscribe and take part are a very large part of that though. You don’t have to read the blog, so you guys have made it somewhat of a success.
btw, I believe you will eventually make some decent money with your blog, myself as well. My point is that it’s not a quick thing. It normally takes alot of time, a year minimum, for a blog to bring in a full-time income no matter how knowledgeable the blogger is. I say that and make next to nothing with this blog
I think guys like you and I will eventually do well with our blogs income-wise, but it will take time. Many “bloggers” I see out there have “make money” blogs and it seems like that’s their only attempt at making money online. Many of them lack the knowledge that it takes in order to retain readers.
@ Everyone - Thanks again for all the great comments. You guys and gals have been extremely supportive. Before I started this blog, or should I say before Terry started this blog
I had never retained such a loyal group of supporters. You guys are what makes blogging fun and why I’m addicted and spend way too much time on this blog rather than making money with my other ventures 
17th January, 2008 at 2:23 am
[...] first question worked fine as a meme, but this second question requires something new. Josh Spaulding introduced me to something an “unmeme”, but the term may have originated with [...]
17th January, 2008 at 2:27 am
[...] first question worked fine as a meme, but this second question requires something new. Josh Spaulding introduced me to something an “unmeme”, but the term may have originated with [...]