Blogging, or any form of writing, is an act of one. You are alone with your thoughts, your words, and your preferred way to write. It’s easy to think you’re the only one thinking your obscene thoughts or telling those kinds of smutty stories.

In fact, there’s an entire community of other sex bloggers and erotic writers doing what you do. There are multiple benefits to joining the community once you find it.

Immediate Readers

When you share your existing or brand-new blog in community spaces, you’re almost guaranteed a few immediate readers. Maybe not many, but a few. This can be a great feeling when you see your stats jump from a few views in a day to a dozen or more. The more active a community, the more potential clicks to your site once you join in.

Once those readers arrive, whether they’re fellow bloggers or new-to-you readers, hopefully, your other blog posts will keep them coming back. But the boost of knowing someone is reading your work might be what you need to keep going.

Potential Feedback and Comments

Back in the day, blog readers loved to leave comments. It was a great way to interact, get to know each other, and let someone know how a post resonated with them. These days, comments are rare. People skim a blog post and jump away as soon as they’re done, even when they loved the story.

While there’s no guarantee of a comment when you join the blogging community — like through a link-up or blog meme — they’re a lot more common. In fact, some of your best feedback may come from other bloggers who share their own personal stories or comment on how your writing makes them feel.

Reminder That You’re Not Alone

Writing and blogging can feel like a solitary endeavor. In many ways it is. It requires you, your keyboard, and your imagination. When you blog about sex, it’s easy to think you’re the only person who’s ever done this or the only person who can relate to how you feel.

The power of a good blogging community is that it reminds us how not-alone we really are. Knowing that others are out there struggling in similar ways can be encouraging because it’s not “just you” going through it. Knowing that others write about sex, even in different ways, can help normalize the feeling of writing sexy stories or about sex.

No Community is Perfect

Communities are made of people, and people are imperfect. You will find bloggers who disagree with you. You will meet bloggers who hold views you find abhorrent. This is true even in communities centered around sexual content. Many of us work hard to raise awareness, educate others, and make our communities better places for everyone. But sometimes we don’t get along or agree.

You don’t have to love the entire blogging community to find your people and place within it. You can build your own little circle of friends from the larger community once you meet people you click with. That circle can fulfill the function of the wider community — providing readers and fans, feedback and comments, and reminders that you’re not alone. 

Looking for a Community to Join?

Every prompt workbook from Obscene Ideas offers its own little community — a link-up centered around the book and topic. Whether you purchase one book or all of them, you can share your blog posts, read others’ work, and get to know other writers who used the same prompts you did. Along the way, you’ll get to know people and find your own circle of friends and fellow bloggers.

Buy 31 Days of Erotic Fiction, use it for blog content, and then join the link-up and the community!

31 Days of Erotic Fiction Community