Military History Articles

Blogging: Advice From Someone Who Got Paid to Do It

Blogging is what I like to do best. I've been at it for years, writing about everything from technology and business to education and subjects I occasionally knew very little about until a client paid me to learn.

Along the way, I earned somewhere around $70,000 writing blogs and other web content for a variety of customers. That doesn't make me Ernest Hemingway, but it does mean that the advice on this page comes from someone who actually got paid to practice what he preaches.

Blogging has changed considerably over the years. Search engines have become smarter, social media has transformed how articles reach readers, and artificial intelligence can now produce several hundred words before an old-fashioned human writer has finished pouring his coffee. But the fundamentals haven't changed much: Find something worth saying, say it clearly, hook the reader early, and don't waste the reader's time.

The nine articles on this page cover what I've learned about doing that—from getting started and writing a good introduction to keeping a blog healthy, using it for business, and even knowing when to hire somebody else to do the writing.

So I'm putting my mouth where my money was. The money, unfortunately, has long since been spent—probably foolishly on computers, software, web trinkets, electronic devices and assorted technological gewgaws that I absolutely had to have at the time.

The experience, however, I still have.

And the advice is free.