Look long enough online, and you can find them in every flavor. There's blogs about cooking, blogs about business, blogs by business, blogs about motherhood, blogs about fatherhood, blogs about television shows, and blogs whose authorship is attributed to the characters in said shows. There are blogs which share, Dear Diary style, the details of the author's day. There are even blogs about blogging, which is becoming recognized as its own, unique form of media.

Blogs have also become one of the most popular features on the web. Not all blogs allow comments, but those that do deliver a one-two punch of content and interactivity. Even blogs that don't allow comments still have the appeal of delivering fresh, new content on a regular basis. For users used to navigating an information highway full of pages that haven't been updated in months or sometimes years, the appeal is clear ? fresh content at their fingertips, at some cases at magazine quality, for free. Not only that, but all the old content is available when needed, for nearly all blogs post their content by date, in reverse order, with the freshest content left easily accessible at the top of the web page.

Maintaining a blog can bring a lot of benefits, but maintenance is the key. A blog requires regular updates to stay fresh so that the traffic will continue to roll. This is hardly a concern for the personal, hobbyist blog meant to keep all of one's friends in the loop, but if the blog is meant for public consumption, it needs regular updates to keep its credibility and serve its purpose. If you can constantly produce, however, the rewards can be significant. 1.7 million adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog. It is one of the legitimate ways to make good money off of the internet, by producing a product which offers value to readers and getting paid for it. Blogging can also put a personal face on a business and provide constant contact to the public, keeping their products in the consumer's mind in a non-invasive way, building brand loyalty and a sense of relationship.

Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, says, ?If you can write a consistently interesting and informative blog, you brand yourself as someone worth doing business with, worth hiring.? Her website states that one of her publishers came to her, rather than her going to him, as a result of her blog.

Most bloggers make their money through advertising, so those who have a moral or ethical stance against advertising, or who feel embarrassed about promoting products or services, might find this a disadvantage. Then again, blogging flip-flops the traditional writer-advertiser relationship. Instead of advertisers influencing what content runs, bloggers themselves have full control over which ads run on their pages, subjecting ads to the approval of the producer rather than the other way around.

There's more to it than writing though ? blogging professionally requires knowledge on a wide range of topics, as this article points out. Such a project requires planning and forethought, and is not going to be for the faint of heart. Then again, few things worth doing are.

By: Carmen Rane Hudson

Edited By: Bruce A. Tucker