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we blog therefore we are MASTER CLASS Jane Yee attributes the success of The Girls' Guide to being open with her audience. "All the blogs that I enjoy are just about people's lives and giving yourself up a little bit to the readers ... making yourself a bit vulnerable." Although again she alludes to how important it is as a blogger to keep some things private. "It's a fine line and one that the most successful bloggers know never to cross," she says. Jane also raises the moral issue of blogging about children. "If I have kids and start writing about them and posting pictures of them ... well, what happens when they grow up and they never wanted to be all over the Internet?" As a mother of two, Heather blogs frequently about her children on Dooce.com. Though she admits that recently her eldest daughter (Leta, aged seven) has shown signs of protest. "Now she actually runs out of the room when I break out a camera," she writes. In August 2010, Heather confessed on the site that, "For the last several months, if I have mentioned Leta here, I have most likely asked her if I could do so ... I intend to practise this going forward, so I guess maybe I am censored to some extent." This censorship also applies to other members of Heather's family, namely her Mormon parents. Heather admits that she was naïve when she first started Dooce.com. The world's oldest blogger is 110-year-old man, Bernando LaPallo. Bernando is a trained chef who shares his tips and recipes for living longer on the site: www. agelesslivemorestore.com. "I wrote horrible things about my family and their religion, and when they found what I had done I took everything down and had a little meeting with myself about boundaries." Coming from the woman who has shared everything from intimate details of her sex life to her time in a mental hospital with millions of readers, this just goes to show that the line between sharing not enough and too much is indeed a fine one. As both a blogger and psychologist, Dr Boyes has had to master the art of writing about her personal life while remaining professional. "With my blog, I like to test the boundaries of how informal and accessible I can be," she says. Using personal examples, Dr Boyes demonstrates to readers how they can apply clinical psychology tools to their own lives. Each month she profiles a different '30 day project' on her blog. For example, past projects have included '30 days of trying new things' and '30 days of self-compassion'. Dr Boyes writes daily about what she has done for the project and invites readers to do the same. Keeping this personal yet professional balance has allowed her to create a successful business. "I get almost all my therapy clients from people reading my website," she says. Makes you 3 wonder 2 www.blogpulse.com states that there are estimated to be over 156 million public blogs in existence. about that old diary doesn't it? Perhaps your everyday musings might have lead you to a following of millions and advertising deals so lucrative you could quit your day job ... if only you had published it online. On the other hand you may end up wishing you'd kept some things just for yourself. We now live in a world where on a daily basis we are bombarded with the most intimate parts of people's lives. Births, relationships and even deaths are showcased online for all to share. So before you trade in that diary for a personal blog, just pause. Consider how what you write today will affect your future. If people like Jane Yee and Heather B. Armstrong are anything to go by, there is ultimately one thing that separates the professional blogger from the amateur. And what's that? Knowing what to hold back. Amanda Bidwell twentysomethingsyndrome.blogspot.co.nz 5 Random Facts about Blogging 4 The word blog is a contraction of the word "weblog" and has only been around since 1999 (taken from the Origins of Blog and Blogger, American Dialect Society Mailing List Apr 20, 2008). 1 According to Technorati's State of the blogosphere 2010, just 11% of bloggers claim it as their primary source of income. 5 The report also showed that only 2% of bloggers receive more than 100,000 views per month. 38 | www.hermagazine.co.nz