I’ve been at this blogging thing for almost two years. It’s a fun gig; it gives me an excuse to sit in front of the computer and feel like I’m doing something worthwhile. There’s little that matches breaking a story, no matter how minor it is (like Apple being used as a Jeopardy! category and Apple ditching the single-button mouse); it’s always fun to see your name on other sites linking to your article. It’s actually almost scary when sites like Ars Technica or Daring Fireball pick up the story as well! If you’ve ever thought about blogging, there are a few things to keep in mind. Here are the things I’ve learned in the last two years.

Don’t get frustrated when nobody reads your site early on. It takes time to build a loyal reader base. Heck, Deep Thought’s been around nearly two years and we have yet to develop much more than a small forum community of about 130 members, however we do have a large number of visitors who see our link on MacSurfer or MacBytes or Digg.

Don’t do it for the money. Unless you’re extremely lucky like a certain Mr. Gruber, don’t expect to make a living off your blog. Instead blog for the love of it. If I was in DT for the money I would have been out long ago.

Don’t expect everyone to agree with you. Although it always feeds to ego to see the comments fill up with a chorus of “I agree,” my favorite blog posts are those that draw some sort of debate and get me or readers to think about what’s at stake here and maybe learn a little.

You’ll have bad days. You’ll have days where you’ll feel like there isn’t anything else to write about and days where you’ll feel like giving up. Don’t. I often find that working through those tough days and getting something churned out helps loads.

Find your niche. Here at Deep Thought, for example, we tend to be somewhat more Mac-centric (maybe 1 70/30 Mac/PC breakdown), but aside from that our subject matter is fairly broad. But we try to have fun and keep it pretty loose. Some of my favorite examples are in our interviews; I don’t know of many tech sites out there that ask their interviewees questions like “How do you contend with the notion that your ass is rock-hard?” Our niche is in being slightly off-beat. In fact, we encourage it. So find a niche, whether it’s a focus on the minutiae of unicode or humor.

Practice good journalism. In my mind anytime you publish something you are, to some degree at least, a journalist. Even if you use biting humor or have some sort of agenda (say, a liberal blog), be accurate and as fair as you can be considering your subject matter. Don’t slander. Don’t discard evidence simply because it weakens your case; instead address it--it’ll create a stronger argument. Be honest. Be straightforward. If you make an error, correct it. Make sure you have your facts straight. Don’t intentionally mislead your readers, and do what you can to avoid accidentally misleading them. Do your research. Good journalism takes a lot of work and it’s something that I could always improve upon. Nobody’s prefect, but I feel it should be the ultimate goal as a blogger.

Oh, and have fun. If you don’t enjoy it you’re throwing your time--and your reader’s time--in the trash.