Way back in 2011, I started spending more time on Twitter and I began to follow a few people who enjoyed the types of games and books I like. A few of them were bloggers as well and I thought it was a great way to share some screen shots and get some of my enthusiasm out of my system, so I stared a blog too. It was for me, I didn’t really push or share it much, I had no great expectations. A few of my posts got comments, a few got a lot of views because they helped solve a game problem that I’d had and others had too. It was enough to keep me interested and active on my blog for a while, for the most part. But like most people, I needed a bit more motivation and some help with promoting my blog. One of the blogs/bloggers I followed on Twitter mentioned the Newbie Blogger Initiative, and I decided to join in.

My original blog was on the free version of WordPress, back before I had a few years of Web Design work under my belt. It was okay, but nothing custom. When I started it, there weren’t any ads cluttering the blog,  but there are now, ugh! I get it, I was using a free resource that the company who owns WordPress decided to monetize. However, some of the ads they put on my free blog really bothered me. I decided that enough was enough and registered a domain, set up my favorite custom theme, and uploaded my old blog posts. With all that work to start fresh, it would be a real shame to let this space get dusty too, so here I am, signed up for Blaugust and posting on day one. Yay me!

The NBI eventually became Blaugust, which was a challenge by Belghast of Tales of the Aggronaut to post something on our blogs each day in August. If you read back through my blog history, you’ll notice a lot of apologies for ghosting my subscribers. Life comes at you fast and writing regular posts sometimes needs a little external encouragement. Bel became the muse for a few of us who needed some inspiration on what to post, and a reason to post more. If you would like some encouragement to get started and a great blogging community, I definitely recommend that you sign up and read about how this year’s Blaugust is structured. You’ll find a wonderful group of creative people who will help keep you motivated and share some great tips, not to mention finding some new blogs to read and follow.

The “why” of Blaugust is relatively straightforward. The blogging community is nowhere near as large as it once was. Many of us have aged out of blogging with real-world responsibilities and others have just moved on to other time-consuming hobbies. Blaugust gives us a chance to infuse the community with a fresh lease on life as we court new bloggers to join the fray. –Belghast