The short answer to that question is — no.
But if you are going to build a successful fan club or information hub in a particular market or niche, you will need a measure of passion and the desire to talk about your area of interest with passion.
Notice I said talk, not write. Here’s why…
Let me use myself as an example. I’m a 2 finger typist — have been for years. I may hit 40 words per minute on the good minutes. It takes me longer than most people to produce a single blog post.
I don’t have any “special” writing skills or ability. But here’s my secret weapon…
I have great passion about the things that interest me. The art and science of stand-up comedy and the field of entertainment interests me greatly. Internet marketing interests me greatly. Blogging interests me greatly.
Teaching and training — showing others how to do things interests me greatly.
I don’t depend on any kind of great writing skill when it comes to posting on my own blogs. I simply talk about what I want to talk about. Because of that…
I rarely am without something to talk about on my blogs.
Noticed I said talk, not write. And when I blog, I do it to attract people who are interested in the same things as me.
Imagine going to a party and meeting someone that shares a similar passion or interest as you do. Can’t you literally talk to that person for hours?
That’s what it’s like for me. The difference between this blog and a fan club blog is that I provide more “training” types of information, as opposed to more personal, day by day information.
Hey, it’s what I like to do 🙂
And that’s what I would encourage you to do — be yourself and “talk” to your audience as opposed to trying to “write” to them everyday.
I will tell you this — you probably need a spell checker. I do most of my posts offline in Microsoft Word which has a spell checker function.
I’m not such a hot speller either.
You can get a clone of the Microsoft Office suite for free at OpenOffice.org.
It kills me that folks spend hours and hours on MySpace and Facebook, not making a dime, when they could have their own blog, their own community and profit from it — just like MySpace and Facebook do when you use them.
By the way, Facebook activities can be a great traffic resource for your blog.
Here’s the bottom line:
You don’t have to be a great writer. You don’t have to be an expert. But when it comes to blogging, or any other online income adventure, you need to have some interest and passion.