I’ve been blogging for a long time. I’m not as prolific as some, but I try and post weekly, and occasionally I do better than that. I’ve had long droughts too. Every once in awhile I ask myself, “Why do I blog, anyway?”

As I’ve pointed out in the past, I can trace almost every opportunity I’ve had back to blogging. So that’s pretty compelling.

But it’s also because I receive great feedback and hope that I’m genuinely helping people.

Last night I received an email from Tilman Kreuder. I don’t get a ton of these sorts of emails, but enough to know that there are people out there reading and appreciating what I’m writing. Here’s Tilman’s email (edited a bit for privacy reasons):

How are you?

I’ve been a frequent reader of your blog for the last two years and it really helped me in the process of starting my own little business. A friend and I are bootstrapping a platform (web and mobile) for soccer statistics in parallel to our day jobs. Thanx to you we are using tools and methologies from the lean startup process, so thank you again for that advice.

Another friend, who is working from Germany on ****************, and I are going to San Francisco from July 30th until August 13th. Him partly to work more closely with his partners and me mostly for vacation and to meet people.

Before I bore you to death I’ll get to the point: Are you by any chance (I know the odds are bad) in SF during that time period as well? If yes, I would love to meet you for a coffee or slice of pizza to show you our lean canvas for the soccer statistics and pick your brain a little.

Take care and keep on blogging.

I don’t know if I’ll be in SF during that time period, but I emailed Tilman back right away and thanked him for the note. Sometimes you get half-hearted emails where people say, “I love your blog, now check out this thing…” which for the most part feel fake. I typically delete those emails. But Tilman’s email is cool and appreciated.

Bloggers blog because they want attention. They want feedback. I haven’t been able to develop a great community here in terms of comments and dialogue, but a lot of that does happen on Twitter (and occasionally on Facebook.) Anyway, that’s why I blog. I know (from feedback like Tilman’s) that people are out there extracting some amount of value from what I write. And that’s pretty damn cool.

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Sidebar update: While writing this post, I got the following email, which is the other side of blogging / having a public profile of some kind:

I find it pleasurable to request your partnership in business worth USD$98.6M. This is legitimate and may be of appeal to you. Contact me directly on: jki-sang010@live.hk

Sorry, I don’t find it pleasurable in the least.