Blogs, blogs, blogs. In the olden days (by internet standards, at least), before vlogs and streaming captured the public imagination (as well as the imagination of advertisers everywhere), blogs (short for "weblogs") were one of the main attractions of the internet. In fact, they still are. The most popular and influential blogs have enough followers to populate a small country. They're ground zero for what many of us would now call "influencer culture", people whose reputation and livelihood are based around (essentially) being well-liked and widely-followed on the internet.

The first blogs debuted in the mid-nineties. Back in those days, operating a blog was a clunky process, often having to be linked from a central archive or home page. Unless you were a skilled programmer, there wasn't any other choice. That is, until specialized blogging platforms were created.

First of them was Blogger, before being followed by platforms such as TypePad, and (most famously of them all) WordPress. It was the introduction of these blogging platforms, which enabled the average non-tech-savvy person to set up and customize their own blog with less effort than ever, that really contributed to the explosion of blogs in the early 2000s. Seemingly everyone was making a blog of their own back then. Celebrities. Politicians. Businesspeople. Maybe even your next-door neighbor.

This was a time where more and more blogs began to move into serious territory, like politics or finance. A wider variety of people starting blogs meant a wider variety of perspectives on what blogs could be used for. Blogs were being used to analyze political speeches, discuss the stock market, and even teach readers how to set up their own blogs.

In what was truly a sign of the times, Weblogs, Inc. (which was started by Jason Calacanis in 2003) was sold to AOL for $25 million. It proved that blogs were no longer a fad or a niche internet thing. Blogs now had the capacity to make or break fortunes.

Make no mistake, traditional blogs are still relevant today. Even though more and more attention is being drawn towards multimedia experiences, to those vivid combinations of visuals and text that characterize sites such as Twitter or Instagram, long-form essay-style blogs still draw in millions of readers a day.

Nowadays, for anyone wishing to start a blog that expects to be taken seriously, the standard to be used is Wordpress. A big part of its success is its wealth of convenient plugins, ranging from web security plugins that protect a blog from malicious hackers, to convenience-based plugins that do most of the heavy lifting for common elements of a webpage (e.g. forms, headers and footers).

In the same vein, all sorts of new services have sprouted around the so-called "blogosphere", all presenting their services for blogs that aim to be the very best. Top companies who manage blogs are willing to pay for the fastest wordpress hosting, or more detailed analytics of their visitors. All for the smallest edge against their competitors. That's how important blogging has become in the big leagues. Amusing memes or funny videos may be the purview of social media sites, but for serious and professional information, traditional blogs are trusted above most other online sources.

So, with that all in mind, you might begin to ask this question: Should I start my own blog?

Well, like so many other things, it really depends. Right now, the blogging landscape can best be described as "immensely crowded". There are over 600 million different blogs out there, right now. If you think applying for a job position against hundreds of other applicants is hard, try getting any views at all in a market where the number of players eclipse the number of stars in the Milky Way.

If you want to start a blog just for that sweet, sweet advertiser money, then I'll have to tell you to stop before you waste your time any further. In a market this crowded, it would be a miracle to get any views at all, let alone generate enough advertising revenue to buy a meal.

If, however, you have some kind of unique skill, insider knowledge, or unique experiences you're just burning to share (or you're able to churn out unique content), then your blog might go over better. People are always looking for the latest new thing, and having content to your name that no one else is providing can prove to be the boost your blog needs to launch itself into the big leagues.

For example, John C. McCrae (better known online as "Wildbow") posted a work of fiction surpassing a million words on his blog, titled Worm. He posted a chapter twice a week, slowly building up the story in a format we now call a "web serial". In doing so, he amassed a passionate fanbase in the hundreds of thousands, and opened the floodgates for other web serial authors to do the same thing.

Even in a crowded setting, uniqueness makes all the difference in the world.