It seems the growing trend for anyone with a working knowledge of WordPress is to think that blogging is a quick and easy way to generate income, that a few posts here and there about a topic you’re interested in is a fast track to internet stardom. But in an online community with over 1 billion blogs, many of which have been around for almost as long as Google itself, is it even possible to separate yourself from the crowd or is it simply a waste of time?

The main bone of contention hinges on whether the end game for your blog is related to monetary value. If you happen to fall into the mystical category of blogging for fun with zero economic motivation, then blogging provides a perfect outlet for creativity and a way of conserving knowledge of current trends and an ever-growing online community. However, if your core aim is to drive traffic to your blog in order to convert visitors in to revenue, it is often no mean feat and can often rely on being in the right place at the right time rather than scores of journalistic prowess that satisfy the wants and needs of modern culture.

The blogging world essentially falls into two camps; those looking to blog for personal or financial gain, and those looking to increase exposure for a company or organisation that considers a blog as a secondary element necessary to boost growth.

There has never been a more important time to ensure the latter is at the forefront of digital strategies. Keeping fresh content on a company’s site ensures control over a brand and generates an outlet to push promotions insight and further information that can strengthen a brands image, as well as introducing keywords and improving your reputation with Google. There is no argument as to whether it is important for a business to blog; but a personal blog, with the intention of making a financial gain, lost in a sea of over a billion other blogs might not be the best use of valuable time and resources.

The key to any effective personal blog is a USP; without a unique element driving interest and satisfying a niche, a blog will simply fall by the wayside in favour of better established sites and opinions within the same market. Even with a USP it’s important for a blog to constantly evolve; changing trends and markets mean that the old style of subscribing to a blog and expect the same content within the same niche is dead.

Kevin Drum believes that old school blogging is dying:

Not only do blog posts need to be standalone, but they can’t even ramble very much. You need to make one clear point and avoid lots of distractions and “on the other hands.” This is because blog readers are casual readers, and if you start making lots of little side points, that’s what they’re going to respond to.

And I agree; with so much choice, your visitors will have no qualms about going in search for something new and current the minute your content gets stale, or if it stops providing a purpose, such as answering questions quickly and easily. This means blog subscriptions are no longer the kingpin of the blogging world; many regular readers will now follow a blogger on social media. Often, taking advantage of new social media and pushing content from around the web can be the best way of generating a following, including external opinions and offering a take on areas outside of your wheelhouse.

The second core entity of any good blog is the quality of the written word; without good quality content readers will quickly lose interest and the post you put so much time and effort into won’t be read past the first four lines. While the content can be altered to fit a niche, increasing the success rate of your blog as it adapts to changing markets, being an average writer is an element to take into consideration as more time and energy will be exhausted into your blog.

In the immortal words of Pablo Picasso, ‘I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.’ But what if all of that time spent doing something you cannot naturally do means that you have spent six months pouring your heart and soul into a blog that by the end hasn’t progressed or provided and financial restitution. Has all of that work been worth it? It all boils down to opportunity cost and whether that time could have been better spent elsewhere. What could you have achieved in the same amount of time? Would focusing on a different project have yielded better results? Many successful bloggers put more hours into their blog than most of us work a week; if you’re blogging solely for money and not for passion, you are likely to quickly lose interest and in that case, your time has been wasted.

The real question to ask then isn’t is blogging a waste of time, but is blogging a waste of your time?