Personal Blogs and Websites

Posted by Sebastyn Sebby on Feb 22, 2010 in Blogging | 1 comment

I love personal websites (even more than personal blogs). To me they are the cream of the Internet, the very best of things. Sadly, they’ve got the worst reputation of all sites I think, because they’re often thought of as personal journals, more or less equally as interesting as reading someone’s shopping list of the day. Some are like that, of course, but when you find a good personal blog or a website… Wow!

The great thing about them is that they can reflect their owner freely, without topical restrictions, concern about SEO, marketability or anything of the sort. Sure, they’re hard to promote, and if you like a lot of people reading your stuff, you are bound to find it harder than with any other type of blog or website you may have. Unfortunately, the difficulty in promoting them is the reason why many of the bloggers quit or redefine their topic into something less personal.

In ten years, I haven’t even found a good term to describe different kind of personal sites, which can be anything from a politicians blah-blah about his individual thoughts within his party, to a house wife’s musings about what to cook today or how much poop did the little one produce today. In between, there are a multitude of different ways to write personal blogs, and they should have sub categories! Let’s have a think about it, shall we? (Please feel free to add your thoughts about the matter in the comments.)

Personal Blog or Website

• Artist’s blog -showcasing a person’s works of art and describing the process to create them.
• Politician’s blog – collection of thoughts, opinions and suggestions by a politician.
• Mommy blog – Actually probably the only type of a personal blogs that has a clearly defined sub category.
• Online Journal – The other fairly well known type of personal blogs, but with a lot of confusion. Reports of the daily antics of the blogger. (The original type of blog.)
• “A Thinking blog” – A collection of person’s thoughts of various matters, written in creative non-fiction, without the intent to showcase the writing as art, political view or philosophy, per say, but with the intent to stir thoughts, make a point and/or simply entertain.

For a writer, having a personal blog, the thinking blog -type, is just a must. This will help you to identify the topics and things you keep thinking about, and that will give you further help in finding the topics that will sustain your interest enough for an individual blog or maybe a full book! Even if nobody read it, it’s good to have. (My thinking blog is at http://www.sebastyne.net .)

Does this make sense or ring true to you? Do you think the personal blogs should have more status? Have you noticed how hard it is to even find a category suited for something like a thinking blog when submitting it to blog directories? Any other type you think should be on the list?