I've been throwing this one around for a while, and I couldn't decide which way to take it - a how to blog post or the life of a blogger. Obviously, I'll focus on the second, and I owe my title to the book Coder to Developer. With that, let's take a look at the path of a technical blogger. Of course, this is my experience (as well as a few colleagues), so take it with a grain of salt.

Step 1: Become a coder. At first, when you have questions, you ask someone how to do it. Eventually, you start asking Google. After a few searches, you realize that Google spits back answers from blogs. You read through the whole blog, and become intrigued about the content thatis provided. You forward items of interest to a coworker, and his response (every time) is "Oh yeah. I saw that last week."

Step 2: You start following a few blogs, mostly through your browser. You limit yourself to about 10-15 because of the time it takes to check the pages. You think, "There has to be a better way!" Your coworker tells you about his blog.

Step 3: You start your own blog. You have decent content at first, but then you lose focus, and it eventually rots away to blog oblivion. You still read a lot, but posting is scarce.

Step 4: You find an aggregator and begin subscribing like crazy. Suddenly, you stop blogging for long periods mainly because you read too blog posts. As time goes on, you learn to be more discerning about what is read and what is skimmed. You start to manage your time. You find lots of quality content, but you don't blog it because 1) you don't have time, and 2) everyone else is, so you figure everyone has already seen it.

Step 5: This varies for people, I'm sure. But at this stage, you decide whether or not to keep blogging. If you decide not to, you stop here. If you decide to continue, you make a week long commitment to blog. You read blogs, and as you see interesting posts, you flag them to be blogged later. Then you blog about them. Start with a commitment to blog two or three items every day for a week. You don't worry too much about original content, but try to add commentary to other people's post, either providing feedback, or expounding on it. After posting, you click on each link, not just to verify that it works, but also to add you to the other blog's referrer log, so they see your post. (From experience, if you link to me in a post, I'll subscribe to your blog. I may be in the minority, but I doubt it.) You realize there are millions of blogs, and just because you've seen a post on the blogs you read, doesn't mean all of your readers have seen it. Scoble talked abut commentators vs. connectors, and you fall into the connectors category, as do most "newbies".

Step 6: Blogging becomes a habit - no, an addiction! You start to read posts with an eye towards commentary on it. Your week runs up, and then two. You realize that you have been posting daily, and are starting to get some recognition in the blogosphere. Scoble picks you up in his link blog, sending you readers you otherwise wouldn't have gotten. You link to Robert hoping to get a link in his "real" blog, causing a Scobleanche of traffic. You watch your traffic increase tenfold. Someone links to your blog, and you get excited. You start to post with more heart, no longer worrying about what people may think. (This is where I'm at, I think. So everything after this is pure speculation.)

Step 7: You start to write original content, and it gets picked up in the blogosphere. You realize that Robert won't give you a link if you are commenting on something else - he goes for the main story. You get linkblogged. You also realize that, as your readership grows, you no longer need links from the A-List bloggers. You're doing fine as a B or C list blogger, and are prepared to build your blog from the ground up, without outside "sympathy links."

Step 8: After quite a while (a year or more, maybe) suddenly people are linking to you to get you to link back to them. You've made it!