I’ve been a blogger for about 10 years now, and I can tell you something that is hard about blogging, and writing in general is the fact that not many people click on your article. And just because someone clicked doesn’t mean they actually read it. Sucks heh?
But it’s important to press on. Even when you don’t have a huge audience. Why? Here’s why:
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) and his Wife Melinda are an doing incredible amount of good for the world. They have offered billions to charities and now have a focus on clean sanitation. Because for millions of people, the water they drink is essentially sewage water.
Already in Dakar, Senegal, they have funded an “Omni-processor” that takes sewage (read: Human feces) and outputs ash and clean water. Before that the population used to drink the water from the same source they defecate in. This one plant already processes 1/3rd of the sewage of the city of Dakar and improving millions of lives.
Bill and Melinda are also building a new type of toilet that does not require outside water or electricity. Anyway. What is good and all, but what the heck does that have to do with blogging for a tiny audience?
Glad you asked…
Because of the foundation’s focus on sanitation, they have improved and saved the lives of millions (2,195 children die of Diarrhea each DAY). But what inspired this focus? One day they were reading an article in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof entitled “For Third World, Water Is Still a Deadly Drink”.
It wasn’t even a headliner, just a tiny piece on the newspaper. Being a journalist, Nicholas probably knew his piece would not get read. When it comes to news, certain topics gets more reads than any other, and unfortunately health conditions is not one of them. But he did write the piece, and he did get read.
And look at where that led. It was a throwaway piece, that was quickly forgotten the next day…and yet 2 people who could make a difference read it, and did something about it. All of those changed lives can be traced back to a New York Time columnist writing his piece.
You keep on writing because…
You keep on blogging, you keep on writing because…you never know who’s reading. You really don’t. You just need to be faithful in your writing, and focus on the fact that even if your article might not shake the world, one person who reads it might be the one going on to change the world.
A blogger once shared the fact that one reader of his begged him to talk to his friend who was ready to take his own life. He ended up not doing it. He wanted to until he read one article by this blogger, giving him hope.
I’ve written many articles throughout the years where the stats were terrible…but readers commented along the lines of “This is exactly what I needed, thank you!”
So you just never know who’s reading. You never know who you’re impacting. You just need to keep writing.
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