Blogging is a hard job, we all know that. It seems like it's all fairies and rainbows when it's really witches and swamps. Writers block, HTML, SEO, photography, editing skills, and more - it's a never ending circle of Google searches in order to achieve the blog you want.

As I said, it's a hard game to play but whilst all of these Google searches are happening, you need to identify and find yourself. This should be portrayed in your blog (that is if you want it to be). There's no use copying someone else because you like that, or that's the current trend. Ironically, this comes back to my slogan: Be you, be unique!

Finding yourself as a blogger is possibly an even harder job than all the technical crap. It's about identity and sometimes that can be heard to portray, especially in a website. It's okay to look at people and find inspiration, look at blogs and find what you like and what you don't. But you shouldn't copy. You should be inspired by it, take it and put your own twist on it.


I'm guilty of copying. Not plagiarism - I could never bring myself to do that.

My old blog layout was so cliche. I looked at blogs, a little over a year ago, and decided everyone had sliders at the top of the page, a sidebar on the right hand side and their logos took centre stage. So I thought that if I did this, my blog would instantly be better. I hated it. It never screamed, SOPHIE; It screamed, 'I'M AN AVERAGE BLOGGER'.

What I'm saying is, I took an idea because it was the current trend and fooled myself that it was 'me'.

It's okay to go through stages like this, where you're finding your identity as a blogger, but copying the style of others can get a little annoying. I've seen a few bloggers, who changed their layouts, after myself, to the same sort of layout as me and using the same colours. I love that they found inspiration from what I've done but whereas I felt like it was me at the time, I now feel drowned in the fact that my blog is no longer individual.

UPDATE: 

Since writing this, I have found five...FIVE...blog posts that other people have published that are pretty much a carbon copy of my own (as of 02/09/2018). You DO NOT have to stand for this. Under my Copyright Protection, I can (as can you) take anyone to court if I see it fit for misusing my Intellectual Property. 

I'm not saying, 'stop copying me' because anyone can be inspired from an idea. There is always going to be someone's website who is similar to your own. Part of being a blogger is finding what makes you stand out from the crowd, so for me to have blogs I read that are so, so similar (even down to the blog posts), it infuriates me. I want to be me. I want you to be you.

It's important to find who you are as a person and relay this in your own writing and design. There's no use going through life without individuality. It's like that saying that get's on everyone's nerves as a kid: 'if they jumped off a cliff, would you?'.




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