Old Skool Blogging

Back in ye olden days, circa 2008, when I started blogging, blogs were more like personal journals that you shared with cyberspace. These days there seems to be more focus, both in terms of writing (clearly, most people are not posting their first drafts) and in terms of the content shared (yay for all those picture tutorials). Also, I don't remember more than a handful of bloggers making money off of their blogs and now there are professional bloggers with sponsors. (Good for you! If I could pull it off, I totally would.)

I was reading how when you start blogging as a paying endeavor (full-time or not), you have to be more mindful of more than just what you want to write. Does your sponsor require that you make a project with one of their products? Or at least mention them regularly? Did you remember to disclose affiliated links? (As an aside, does anyone really care? I mean if I'm reading your blog and you link to something that I want to buy and you make some money off the transaction I don't see what the big deal is unless that item somehow costs me more because you are getting a commission. But I digress...) Do you feel pressured to post tutorials as soon as you figure out how to make something? (Again, total sidebar, I read one blogger who was concerned that this pressure has led to some bloggers posting tutorials for techniques that they barely know, thereby possibly leading others down the wrong path.)

I feel like I'm still stuck in the old skool paradigm but everything has shifted. Ironically enough, at work I'm considered the most tech-savvy. I like computers and I usually understand the logic of how everything works so when we get error messages I can figure out what's wrong. However, I never really got into social media (I'm talking about Friendster and the inital incarnations of MySpace and Facebook). Now there are so many outlets, the big ones being FB, Pinterest, Flickr (making a comeback), MySpace (also making a comeback by specializing a little more), Instagram, Google+ and SnapChat. I can't keep up with them all and I'm feeling a little lost in terms of which really fit my need to find an online community (since I haven't found one IRL) and in which I can realistically participate.

How cute from www.peachpops.com

Dude, I don't even know what some of those icons are for...

How do you decide which ones you want to participate in? How do you keep up when you have a job, kids, and never seem to have enough time for non-essentials? (Seriously, I have yet to figure out how to get more than 6 hours total of sleep and that doesn't include the days I just say f* it and stay up to do something just for me.)