I agree totally with that viewpoint. I’ve written over 400 posts on business tips and strategies on my own blog. Purely because I love writing and helping people – yes you’ve guessed it I’m also a coach!

And what’s more I love where I live (Manchester) so I blog about that too. Like you orginally I had no thought to make money there. The blog is at http://www.manchester-blog.com and it probably could only be of interest to the 400,000 Mancunions – but I like doing it and yes it now makes me a little money too.

Jim

I’m envious, you had time to wrtie blog posts while at your job? I’d love to have that luxury.

I completely aggree. I started blogging as a ‘test’ about 18 months ago, as I was being assessed for my day job (ie whether to keep me on or not due to incurable illness). I was fortunate in this respect, as I was not allowed to work during this period, so I had all the ‘time’ in the world to explore the online world and blogging seemed the easiest way to start.

So there I began my ’selfhelp’ blog and my ‘resellers delight’ blog. Yes, postings have been inconsistent, and not frequent enough – but as health improves, this is changing and I am growing the blogs – to Wordpress soon with lots of web2.0 based tools

My point? I began with the exact mindset you note. I didn’t expect anything in return. And the thrill of just receiving one comment, or a few visitors, even without promoting my sites is fantastic – ‘intrinsic value’, rather than ‘extrinsic value’ (such as money focus).

Now that I have been ‘retired’ from my Govt job, I have to think about earning a living onine now – so my mindset needs to be adapted. But I still keep finding myself posting, and searching for hours for free downloads (my ‘goodies basket policy’) for my readers – value and save time for them.

I still don’t have many visitors, as still yet to promote fully. But I have spent weeks learning about the new ‘attention age’ and conversational and relationship based marketing. Setting things up. So, while I am not ‘earning money’, I see this as setting up the basis to earn money in the future, by providing value and not hard-selling (and also using blogging as my main platforms!).

I still love to ‘give’ more rather than sell. But I must in order to survive – so I will still ‘overdeliver’ and give – to balance out this incongruency in my mindset

BTW – I have written a comment for the ‘attention age’ post you made (but it has turned out so long to be a rough article initself! I may post it anyway, and you can edit, moderate, or just keep it for records!

Thanks again for such quality information!

Kind Regards
Megan
Adelaide, South Australia

Your attitude is right on.