Why should I start a blog when there are already so many?

Well…...why does anyone try to compete with anything? It’s called innovation and competition. Challenge yourself, your creativity, find the gimmick that keeps ‘em coming back just like any enterprising business person would do.
10 readers is still 10 readers and you can;t get to 20,000 readers if you don’t hook the first 10.
The journey of a thousand member following begins with the first blog. ;-)

I have a blog. I just post things that are awesome in my mind. But it is mostly tips I find throughout the day that relate to computers. I don’t give a shit if people see it. It isn’t a business or a popularity contest. Just a place for me to share stuff I care about. Anything from Method Man rapping about Sour Patch Kids to installing Ruby on Rails on OS X.

I have the same issue with starting a blog. I don’t think that everybody necessarily has fascinating things to say.

You need to find a niche. What will your blog say that is different to other blogs? Who is your audience? If you can find that gap, then people might be interested. Or you could take a humorous angle, or look at creativity from a scientific perspective or vice versa. Look at the other blogs in the area you are interested in and critique them. Are they well written? Do they have beautiful photographs? Are they funny or informative? Are they targeting a different demographic to the blog you hope to write? Find the gap… if you can do that, your blog will be worthwhile.

Why should start a blog when there are already so many out there? Well, to begin with, if other authors, writers stopped ask themselves similar questions: Why should I write a novel or short story, or screenplay or television show when there are already so many of them out there? Why should I write another book about Shakespeare, or WWII or death or language or culture, or history or anything, what there are already so many of them out there nothing would ever be written again.

First, doing is simply because you want to and would enjoy it is perfectly valid reason for starting a blog. It’s a perfectly valid reason for doing any kind of writing, for doing other sort of creative work; a perfectly valid reason for doing all sorts of things. Secondly, you actually may have something unique to say, and even if you don’t, you may have a unique way to say or express things that have already been said by others.

How unique or interesting your vision, your “writer’s voice” is may be what sets you apart. If you are good enough it will. If not, your blog probably will get lost among the clutter of all the other unread blogs out there. You’ll just never know until you try.

Well, you can’t really lose. Start up costs are negligible (as opposed to, for example, staging an opera), and you might learn something in the process.
The main thing is, you have to enjoy the writing and putting it together. Otherwise, no, it’s not worth it.

If you feel your blog would amount to just another piece of clutter in an already massively cluttered space, then it will. Your expectations of how it will end up seem to contradict your interest in starting one, and the fact that you’ve already chosen a topic.

Perhaps it’ll help you to see the ‘blogosphere’ from a high level view, so to speak and really understand the web, the blogs, the engagement, content and just the nature of things out there.

You’re right that the majority of blogs (there are indeed a great many) are just white noise or ‘clutter’. The honest blogs that simply aren’t up to par, or naive folks who write one post a month on their own slice of cyberspace yet draw no visitors, those types of blogs make up a good chunk of ‘em, and they really aren’t anything groundbreaking.

Apart from those, you have an even worse category of cluttery blogs, including webspam blogs. TONS and TONS of the blogs out there are online for the sole purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and nothing else. They contribute no value, no good quality content and there’s millions of them. Complete trash, posting copied articles, poorly written or “spun” content, old news, tons of spam ads, hundreds of links to other spammy sites, and they soak up all this room on Google’s index and many other places.

Then you have lots of good, high quality blogs. Granted these are the minority… but that’s to be expected, as it takes thought, passion and effort to create a blog with a following and a site that engages your readership.

You really have to ask yourself what your goal is. Why do you really want to write a blog? If it’s successful, sure you can absolutely monetize it very easily later on. But you weren’t thinking about money when you spawned the blog idea. More likely, you were thinking of how you can effectively share your views and wisdom on the subjects of art and science.

Two questions to ask of yourself will really indicate your motives: (1) Do I want to attract attention and bring in new visitors? (2) Am I blogging to produce quality content upon a topic I’m passionate about?

If you’ve said yes to those two, please don’t abandon your ambition to start a blog. The web needs good blogs. You’re right that there’s tons of clutter. But that should not be a discouragement. That should be an uplifting fact for you, because you know how easy it will be to rise above the 80% of crap out there because you’re actually doing it for the right reasons and you’re committed to good content. LMK if you need any help along the way.

You should do it for your own enjoyment. Getting readers will motivate you, but if it’s not fun for you and it doesn’t benefit other people, maybe don’t do it.

How about writing thoughtful comments in other people’s art and science blogs? Yes, there are too many blogs and more of them does not necessarily add value.