How personal do you get with your blogging? If a blog is supposed to be a journal, a log of thoughts or ideas, as it were, then you would think that the idea a blog would be for the blogger to get personal. A blog is like a diary, but I’m starting to think that every time before you hit “publish” you should ask yourself how people are going to react to what you’ve written.

I’ve had it happen to me twice in the past month: I’ve deeply offended groups of people reading one of my blogs with some of the things I’ve written. It was never my intention to do so, but when you’re writing off the cuff and without too much thought, it’s easy to get carried away. The hardest thing for me to deal with when blogging is when I offend people. With a blog like this one, which is about making money online, I don’t get to put too much of my personality into it, but with other blogs I run, I put myself in the spotlight, away from making money, and have to suffer the consequences when people take offense.

What I’ve learned over the past year is that there is no publicity like bad publicity. The handful of times that I’ve written something that really offended certain groups of people have been the times when my reader numbers have peaked the most. You start seeing people emailing each other links and driving traffic to certain posts, and before you know it, there’s a full-on debate spanning up to 50 comments. Although it’s never pleasant to deal with, creating controversy is one surefire way to increase your readership and, in turn, make more money blogging if that’s what your blog is aiming for. The difficulty is to know when to stop.

Some people try to be controversial, while others create controversy without intending to. Kumiko from Cash Quests is good at creating controversy (and making money), but how long she can keep that up with such purpose I’m not sure. On the back of controversy, people also want to be able to warm to the blogger, but if you make your blog personal and with strong opinion, there will always be people who disagree and this can create a buzz.

The controversies I have created with some of my other blogs are never intentional, and in the end they lose some readers, but if you are able to take the blows, ride it out for 24 hours, and appease the situation, you can find yourself with more loyal readers and subscribers than before.

For this reason, getting personal with a blog is vital. You will never cause a stir if your blog reads like a text book, and nor will people take notice if you are always agreeable. If you want to really make money blogging, then get your opinions out there.

Have have you dealt with causing controversy? It’s easy to take it all to heart, but how you deal with a crisis can make or break whether your blog reaches new heights.

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