Blogging Your Way Through School

Megan McArdel brought my attention to another blogging contest that can help students pay for college. This scholarship is worth a whopping $10,000 (!!!) to the best conservative or libertarian blogger currently enrolled in college.

Full details can be found at the America’s Future Foundation. They’re looking for a blog that covers campus events, discovers and breaks news, and demonstrates an influence on campus issues. It doesn’t matter if the blog has multiple authors, so long as each member’s contribution fits a theme and a coherent voice.

If you have a blog, make sure to nominate your site!

If you don’t have a blog yet, this would be at least one more reason (or ten thousand reasons?) to get one!

Here are some other advantages to operating a blog:

• Cheap or free to start
• Collect and save your thoughts & ideas
• Find people who share your interests
• Learn about internet technology, SEO, and internet marketing (high demand jobs here)
• Potential source of income (even without winning an award!)
• If your posts have high quality and focus on topics related to your major or career, it can be a record of your research and proof of your expertise

Maybe blogging isn’t for you - but the trick to getting a free education and a head-start in your career is finding something productive that you enjoy doing. The activity can be a reward in itself, and sometimes it can be a part of something even bigger.

Setting up a blog or other type of website on your own server is really rather easy these days. The host I use, Bluehost, has a Fantatisco script that will install Wordpress in about 5 to 10 minutes. I set up a guide to this process here with pictures: Install Wordpress on Bluehost