The blogging landscape has changed so much since then, I wondered what answers to the same question would like in 2008.
So, why do you blog? What drives you to do it?
This Post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh.
I'll put my own answer in the comments to get the ball rolling.
24 comments:
I blog because I have found that this special hobby satisfies my needs for a creative outlet that enables me to experiment, play, have fun with and study all of the things I am passionate about and interested in: media, internet, community, photography, cooking, writing and eating.
I am lucky in that I get to be creative in my day job too, but even so, there is nothing quite like being free of any directorial constraints and having the total freedom to express yourself exactly as you would like which is what my blog gives me that my job doesn't.
So I can remember where I got the recipe to that great dish I made years ago! And to remember what I served dinner guests in the past so I don't keep serving them the same thing over and over.
I am having a glorious time exploring my new/old country and have to share. My kitchen hums and blooms with what I discover in the markets and my friends' homes. How can I not write about it?
I just started my blog in September after someone asked my for my rib recipe. I said, I'll email it to you and then I thought, why not start a blog and post all your recipes there and ask others to contribute theres. So, Jersey Bites was born. My "day job" is in internet marketing, so this is just a fun project that I hope grows organically and one day makes a little money as well. We have a great time with it when we review a restaurant and hand our business card to them. We're putting together cards to leave at restaurants that say "You've Been Bitten. Check out your review on JerseyBites.com." This kind of stuff is just plain fun.
Which blog do you mean?
At OWF, my goal is the same as always: to improve my writing and provide an excuse/motivation to research stuff. If I know I'm going to have to share my information with the world, it makes me more cautious about what I write.
At OWEE, I just rant or share neat little things among a few readers. OWEE has maybe 1/10th of OWF's readership, maybe 1/100th :)
But I've recently discovered the pleasures of having a "link blog" (which feeds the "snacks" feature on OWF). I use that as a place to bookmark interesting posts that I may want to revisit at some point.
I blog for all the reasons Sam does.
The only thing I can add to her post is that I also blog to honor and remember all those who formed me and who have encouraged my passion for cooking and my understanding that the food in our lives goes deeper than the edibles on our plates.
I blog to have a more interactive experience with readers of my writing. As a magazine writer, I don't often hear from readers, but on my blog, I encourage the sharing of ideas and information. It's incredibly rewarding to be able to exchange ideas with, and learn from, my blog readers.
1. I love to cook, and people are always asking me for "my recipe". I thought a web page would much more efficient than always emailing the recipe.
2. After manually adding recipes and trying to index them over several years, I decided a blog format would make much more sense.
3. I secretly desire to be a professional web-designer. Much more fun than my real job! I am my own guinea pig when it comes to design work, and dawnsrecipes.com and demeo-web.com give me an opportunity to learn new design skills.
I blog because nobody else in my vicinity is willing to experiment as wildly with food (my foodie cousins are unfortunately very far away from where I live)... and I would go crazy if I were to keep cooking "for one" without a chance to share my discoveries. Ah, and also, blogging satisfies the inner attention whore in me. =)
I blog because I like the give and take of the food blog world between us all. We each give a bit of ourselves by sharing our recipes and reviews and then take and use each others recipes.
I also blog because I love to cook and bake, especially bread, and I like to share my experiences and maybe help someone having problems with achieving a good loaf of bread.
Finally, it is a way for me to practice my creative writing hobby.
Sam is right, since I started blogging over 4 years ago, the landscape has changed so much. Happily, with the exception of a few, the food blog world has a relatively friendly place to be.
I'm the same as Lydia being a freelance journalist. When I started I didn't really know what direction it would go in and then getting feedback became addictive. It is also a good place to experiment and have a bit of fun. When I started I didn't think of a blog as a way of personal marketing. But as a result of mine I reviewed last year for two leading local guides and was signed for a (small)weekly column on restaurants in the local Murdoch daily. This sort of dictates the direction I'm taking the blog and its raison d'etre. Now I'm trapped and can't give up blogging!
It started because I wanted to understand the medium. I write professionally, so it made sense to me to get as much experience as I could blogging.
But now, a year later, erm, it seems to have become part of my routine. I would visit the sites I visit, seek the information I am interested, make notes of the recipes I like whether I had a blog or not. So why not keep blogging and see if I can be of some help to other people straddling the line between good food and good health.
Cheers!
I blog for many of the same reasons Sam does, except my day job is not overly creative, so the blogging outlet is very impt to my mental health.
Having an onlone log of recipes was also a motive.
as an ex-journalist I also wanted to work on my first person voice
I blog because it's the best way to combine the things that interest me and fill my daydreams - food, cooking, writing and sharing with friends. Blogging lets my friends know what I'm doing on a regular basis - the stuff that is most important to me, i.e. what I'm eating! Food blogging is a way of putting another (and another and another) leaf in the dinner table.
My original reason had to do with my hobby of entering cooking contests. When I'd go to one, people would ask me to call them THAT DAY with how the contest went, then whether or not I won. There was no way to call that many people, so I figured it would be easier to put it on a blog, then people could check for themselves. Also, at social events people would ask about the contests. I was always worried about boring them, so I thought I could direct them to my blog.
Then the blog became a way to disseminate recipes to friends and family and have quick access to the ones I like.
Once I started, I realized I liked the creative process of writing on a regular basis. I also enjoy the interaction with people who comment on the blog.
The only thing I DON'T like is the heckling my husband gives me every time I take a picture of food!
Also, the irony is that I started the blog for friends and family ... and I think they are the ones who look at the blog the least.
I honestly can't remember why I started blogging about food... partly because I don't have a lot of foodie friends close at hand (like jesse) and I like to share my discoveries.
Also, I had trouble finding cookbooks that suit my ethos of fresh, healthy, yummy AND affordable. Food blogs seemed to capture the everyday reality of cooking so much better - so I wanted to join in!
plus i love writing.
I had to really think about this one...and I still couldn't come up with anything more profound than...I just like you all and somehow if I didn't have a blog, I wouldn't feel the same connection.
And I'm a goof. That helps. :-)
It's taken me a few days to think of what I wanted to say here! It was an interesting thing to contemplate, thanks Sam.
I may be one of the few food bloggers who started a blog without even knowing the whole food blog community even existed, and I started blogging just to share recipe with others who were asking for them. Now, there are a lot of other reasons why I keep blogging.
--I love being part of a community of food lovers who are always teaching me new things about cooking or ingredients.
--It combines writing, photography, and cooking, three things I've always been passionate about doing.
--I love the incentive to always try new recipes and it's changed the way I cook a lot, making my meals a lot more vegetable and salad focused (something I might not have predicted.)
--I've made some real blogging friends who I love learning from and sharing ideas with.
--Since I do have ads on my blog, earning a little extra money for something I love to do is certainly nice, although it wouldn't be enough of a reason if blogging wasn't so fun in so many other ways.
I started blogging to replace my working life when confined to home with illness. It has now become my hobby. Some people golf, some people paint, I blog. I love sharing my passion for food and wine with the like minded bloggers who make up the food and wine blogging community. Blogging has prompted me to step outside the square with my cooking and try new things.
My son has multiple severe food allergies. I started blogging to organize my recipes for myself and to share them with others. It seemed a shame not to, since they required so much effort and creativity to develop.
Since then, it has become a true creative outlet. I've become interested in photography and rediscovered my enjoyment of writing. More importantly, I've discovered an entire community, mostly other mommies, dealing with the same thing.
very interesting to hear people's motivations.. personally:
1) after blogging with my partner for about 4 years as a way of keeping in touch with friends and family after moving far far away, I felt like having something all of my own. with no bikes on it.
2) I love cooking, and have kind of isolated by crazy in-depth conversations about food and enjoy that energy and interaction, and thought a blog might be a way to develop/expand that.
3) I was working in creative areas (marketing and events) but working in gov also means so much protocol and approvals and amendments from above, and I really needed something that my manager was not going to edit and tell me was too risky b/c the mayor might not like it - screw the mayor!
4) food blogging community is really lovely and interactive and dynamic and fun, and a great thing to be part of.
I blog as a way to get myself in gear to write down all those recipes that I've made for ages but are just in my head - and, as someone here said, so I don't have to constantly give them out to folks individually. Also, I find that this is a good way to motivate me to try out new things that I've always wanted to figure out how to make!
This year's goal is to use the blog to test some recipes I haven't made in years to see if they still work and are worth keeping in my master file.
I was just thinking about this today...
My main reason for blogging is to share my love for food and my passion for cooking. It is highly motivating to keep a blog. I'm constantly thinking of new recipes and plating ideas. It allows me to have that creative outlet, which I lack in my finance related job. Also, if I can inspire 1 person to cook in this convenience obsessed world, that would make me really happy. :)
I started a couple of years ago because I wanted to help new barbecue competition teams get started. Veterans were always willing to give advice, but I was seeing much from other newbie teams, so I thought I'd share what I'd learned before I forgot it all. As it turns out, that's some of what I try to do even now... Learning to bake bread from someone who's also just learning, learning to take better photos, with the help of a good photographer, from another photo newbie, etc.
Other than that, I just like showing how I do stuff, in case it inspires others. It gives me an outlet for 2 things that make up who I am... a creative outlet for that side of me and a teaching outlet for the hidden teacher in me.
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