I remember the time when blogging was still in its infancy: people were posting regularly about their personal lives, innermost thoughts, secrets and gossips shared, . Blogging served as a place to vent frustrations, share dreams and goals, or promote enthusiasm about a personal favorite.

Viewership wasn’t a big deal back then – at least, not the way it is now. Sure, there were some people who consistently got viewership, subscribers, comments, and front-page status on Xanga (just shows how old I am), but I didn’t give a shit about all that: I just wanted to write about the things that bothered me, the things that I really liked and could squeal about for days, and the things that worried me.

But now, blogging has exploded into a bonanza and one of its sub-niches, beauty, has become a rat race after it’s proven to be a money maker (to an extent). Of course, the lure of making money from a seemingly innocuous hobby is a difficult wave to ride out when you start a beauty blog or a seasoned blogger that’s never done beauty before.

Do I write for the sole purpose of viewership and making money from the ads on my blog site? Believe it or not, no. Otherwise I’d be bombarding you all with daily blog entries about the “BEST MAKEUP EVAARARARAR!!!!!1!!!!” and how you all need to buy it through the affiliate links I provide (which, by the way, will never happen – in part because I choose to buy makeup with my own money and I simply don’t fit the criteria needed to have affiliate links).

But it is difficult not to feel frustrated when people who have just started beauty blogs suddenly blow up overnight. From a simple standpoint, we’re all doing the same cookie-cutter approach: talk about makeup, promote the ones we like and shit on the ones we dislike.

And for the ones who got a head start, promote the ones that will keep sending you free products for PR. It’s a complex machine that used to exist in print magazines, as someone pointed out somewhere on the Internet – now, it thrives on its vastness.

No, this isn’t me writing a woe-is-me or self-pity or pity party entry. I want to find my way back to blogging as I remember and enjoyed it. But I guess entries like these can be easily labeled as self-pity.

And now I remember why I stopped blogging for a while – because of that very reason.