- 1. English doesn’t have to be your first language
Although it seems that at once you start on the loser position in competition with “native” English bloggers, you have to know it’s a wrong opinion, in fact. Of course you mustn’t make a lot of mistakes in every post but look - your writing can be far from perfect, and no one will mind it, especially when readers know that English is your second language, right?
- 2. You don’t have to play with translations anymore...
If problems with translation are not related to you, it will be concern to your blog in future. I must say that playing with translations is one of the most distressing things in my little blogging occupation, particularly when I want to quote some official releases. The more inspired and technical it would be, the more difficult and foolish it would be translated. I don’t wish anybody to make from that mash something right.
- 3. …because English is the most efficient language.
I think I don’t have to write about the reasons. Every thing in the Web has English name, and English description. If you don’t believe in that words, you will have to check official homepages of any site/program/application/person that matters.
- 4. Your content will be not wasted…
Just Imagine - you wrote a nice post. Can you tell me which way the rest of the Web will get to know about your post? Indeed, you can’t! Second issue here is the monetizing. For example, when I write in Polish I can only enjoy revenues from Google AdSense program. The reason is totally lack of other Advertising Networks - if I want to earn money, I can only use AdSense. I don’t know how it works in other countries, but I guess there are similar situations. Would you guess how many Advertising Networks exisist in everlasting English Web? 20? 30? 50? Well, there is a lot of networks, John Chow counted 130. In addiction, AdSense is one of the greatest programs, but I must say that some of them must be better than AdSense, in fact.
- 5. … and not any blogger will steal it, surely.
Imagine again - you have written a nice post, why not, you have a really worth post on your unpopular “native” blog that no one knows about in United States, for example. Everyone is able to translate it, and make it public on his own blog. So, if nobody in USA knows your blog, impudent thief will be never called the thief. Shall I tell you he will get from it 20-times larger traffic than you - author of the orignal post?
- 6. Your blog will get more readers. A lot of readers, perhaps.
Do you know how many people are browsing the Web in your country? 10 millions, 15 millions, maybe 30 millions? Do you know that United States have 200 millions of internauts? If you write posts in your native language, you will waste your time. Try to kick me if I am far from the truth. Ok, there is a one exception - Chinesse (just take a look who is on the second place of tehnorati most popular blogs ranking)
- 7. You can promote yourself much easier and effectively
As I write above, there are a lot of people in the Internet, they like to read great posts about great things, and they like to share the links with themselves. We have a lot of social networking services, and you will choke on the traffic if people start to think post that you made is something really cool. There are many ways to promote your blog in the World Wide Web, I think I will write many posts about that issue in future.
- 8. You get a chance to be a source of information
Well, if you write really great post in German (or Polish, every language that’s not English) the glory (traffic, money) will belong to guy from point five. When you write in English you will get a chance to be the first, anyway.
- 9. Your blog will get more clever audience
Clever readers are of importance. They comment your posts, share their knowledge with you, as well as they report your mistakes and answer your questions. When you write in English you will receive much more traffic, much more foolish readers who don’t do things described above, and much more clever readers that matter. In addiction - there is one extra advantage - at least fools from your country will never find your blog. as opposition to wise readers from your country, who understand every English post good.
- 10. The final pleasure of blogging in English
Finally, I must say that blogging for the whole world gives much more pleasure than writing to small group of readers from your native country. It’s amazing when many readers from other countries, from Canada to China, are staying in touch with you, your blog, and your RSS feeds, too.
July 5th, 2007 #
I’d add 11th reason.
If you aren’t english native, and you’re looking for a job, it’d be easier to convince your next employer that you speak and write fluent english. You english blog will be a good proof.
July 5th, 2007 #
Let’s say only If you blog politically correct, don’t you think so?
July 5th, 2007 #
I wouldn’t show my future employer any blog on which I was complaining about my last workplace.
July 17th, 2007 #
I’ve just started the blog in English. Big merit of that is the fact that I started to notice and remember much more English words, while browsing the net searching for some interesting stuff to put on my blog. And in fact it is a real pleasure to express your thoughts in foreign language.
According to AdSense and SEO, in my opinion it’s much harder to compete for the position in search engines but as you mentioned the prize is higher, as you get more for clicks.
July 19th, 2007 #
I see, I’ve noticed that my language skills are increased, too. People talk it’s obvious thing, when you write and read you know it better… But when I’ve started, it was not quite “touch and go”
It’s harder to compete but incoming traffic gives a nice compensation, in my humble opinion. Without any comparison to our native market where users don’t know what the RSS is.
Also I can say that when I write about more challenging issues, still there are some problems, especially when I want to use new sayings. My friend from USA said that from time to time it stops making sense. As you see, I’m working on it, haha
August 4th, 2007 #
Well, you’re right, if you spek English, your ideas spread the world
But, as we know, the most important in blogging is content. And I feel that my English is not as fluent to blogging in this language. So I started blog in Polish, which, I hope so, also be succsesfull, but in narrow scope
August 4th, 2007 #
The most important thing is amount of your money and number of subscribers. Fairy tale about spreading the world with amazing stories just doesn’t work. Content is not enough for international market, it’s just only one of components. If you want to archive success in shorter period of time (let’s say in 6 months), you do need money for realizing your marketing strategy. Just remember there are other ways to make money online, some of them are much easier than building another professional blog.
Monetizing a Polish website won’t be easier than archiving international success, so I wish you good luck Tomek
August 4th, 2007 #
[...] dość dawno Bartosz Florczak (hm, a może Florchakh) wynotował 10 powodów by blogować tylko po angielsku. O ile generalnie zgadzam się z większością jego argumentów, choćby biorąc pod uwagę mój [...]
November 2nd, 2007 #
[...] 10 Reasons Why To Blog Only In Mighty English [florchakh] [...]
December 4th, 2007 #
[...] Wczoraj trafiłem na blog jednego z czytelników tej strony, na którym przeczytałem artykuł “10 Reasons Why To Blog Only In Mighty English”. I zainspirowany jego lekturą założyłem kolejnego bloga. Po [...]
January 19th, 2008 #
Few days ago I did chat with two authors of my blog. We all write in Polish now, but writing in English was subject of our meeting. By doing a simple comparison we ended up with conclusion that ours Apple Blog now is realy strong and the content is much better than some famous international blogs/news sites.
Thanks for that post, it sure brings good point to discusion
January 19th, 2008 #
Got second thought: we discussed hiring professional translator to convert our content into English once it’s published in Polish. For trial period I can afford to pay that guy with money from ads.
January 19th, 2008 #
Good luck Paweł. I also highly recommend considering some investments in advertising, for a niche site like yours good content is definitely not enough to success (even when you have it translated into brilliant US English
), and it’s actually way easier to build a readership with ads. Do some case study on successful “products” like this, you will see that investments in advertising may return very well in a period of time when planned wisely