8 Inspirational Blogs That Can Ignite Your Passion
Feb

As a blogger, I feel it’s extremely important to build relationships with other bloggers. After all, we are all interconnected on the web and it’s amazing how small it seems when you really get involved in the blogging community. Everyone seems to know everyone else and it’s almost like one big family.
Well, it’s like family without all the drama and fighting anyway.
Since I started this blog about 4 months ago, I have read hundreds of blogs, have subscribed (and unsubscribed) to dozens of newsletters, and looked for the best blogs I can find.
Throughout my online travels, I have managed to find a few blogs that really stand out and I have compiled a list of 8 of them that have inspired me in one way or another. I hope you will find them motivating as well.
The Inspirationals
SiteSketch101.com. Although Nicholas Cardot’s site keeps popping up in my posts, I just couldn’t leave him off this list. He is passionate about teaching others, is extremely knowledgeable, and very humble about it all.
Site Sketch 101 is an incredibly valuable resource for those looking to improve their online presence. Each of his posts are well articulated and filled with thought provoking ideas.
What Inspires Me: Nick is probably the most sincere person I have met online. He gladly offers his help and expertise to anyone who needs it and seems to always to be willing to help someone out.
He can frequently be found on Twitter starting meaningful conversations and uses it to make friends, not contacts. His post, The Amazing Power of Friendship Marketing, sums up his approach.
One thing that stands out to me is that he will often make you think about the solution to a problem instead of just telling you. He really wants people to learn and get better. Imagine that!
ByBloggers.com. Jonathan Wondrusch runs this blog which started as a blog about creating killer eProducts and has transformed to a great resource for any blogger looking to build an awesome blog.
His writing style is genuine and unique and offers a lot of great information. He also found himself on Jade Craven’s superlist of 40 Bloggers to Watch in 2011, which is an annual post she does for Darren at ProBlogger.net.
He also has done a great interview at BlogCastFM, in which he talks about how to really love your customers. Definitely worth a listen.
What Inspires Me: There are only a handful of blogs that I visit every day and this is one of them. His writing is funny and conversational, yet filled with great information.
What really inspires me is his passion for helping others and creating a resource that is extremely valuable. This blog will dominate someday, so keep your eyes on it!
BloggingBookshelf.com. This is Tristan Higbee’s blog and he is the zen master of comments. If your blog is not getting the number of comments you would like, you need to visit this site ASAP. Tristan has a very down to earth style and his posts are interesting and easy to read.
He has figured out the importance of community and is exploiting it to the max. I’m sure he spends a large amount of time commenting on other blogs and forming relationships and it looks like it’s paying off in spades.
What Inspires Me: I love comments and eagerly anticipate them each day. I have been trying hard to build them up on this blog and have looked to other sites to see what they are doing.
That’s how I found Tristan’s blog. He get tons of comments and is building a strong community and I love that. It’s all about interacting with your readers and he does it very well.
Sensophy.com. Jacob Sokol is a very cool guy with a huge passion for inspiring people. I’ve had the chance to chat with him and he’s got a great outlook on life. Check out his post, The Easy Way to Inspire 8,000,000 People, and tell me that this guy isn’t on to something big here..
What Inspires Me: Jacob’s passion is contagious. Just talking with him or reading his posts is enough to make you feel better. You have to love someone who is so optimistic and just loves life. Go say “hello” to him, he’s definitely a great dude.
LavenderUses.com. Patricia Millman is the queen of commenting and chances are, she has probably left a comment on your blog!
Her blog is about lavender, but her posts lately have been focusing on social networking and building a business. She has mastered the art of building a network of friends through her commenting strategies and has built significant traction because of it.
What Inspires Me: The first thing that drew me to Patricia was her comments on my blog. Each comment she leaves is written thoughtfully and it’s obvious that she takes time to read through and understand each post. And I swear, I think some of her comments were actually better than my blog post!
If you check out her blog, you will see a massive amount of comments and this is all attributed to her dedication to helping others by leaving thoughtful and helpful comments. I’ve learned a lot from her style and approach to building a network.
JoelRunyon.com. Joel is thrill seeking adventurist with a passion for all things impossible. He has a ton of things he wants to do and already has done. He is a motivating guy and has the ability to motivate his readers.
What Inspires Me: When you leave a blog feeling better than before you got there, you know you have found something special. That’s how I feel when I visit his site. He is optimistic and full of life. A nice change from the grind of the 9 to 5 for sure…
SoManyPlaces.com. This blog is all about a couple, Kim and Brian, and their dream of quitting their jobs and traveling around the world.
They are saving every dollar they can to be able to walk away from office life and live their true passion. If this isn’t inspiring, I don’t know what is.
Their goal is to leave in January 2012 and visit at least 16 countries. I am rooting for them 100% and plan to follow their progress online.
What Inspires Me: When someone can find what they’re most passionate about and then create a way to live it, it’s so inspiring. ow many people do you know that want to see what the world has to offer? Tons. How many are actually doing it?
NoMoreBacon.com. Ryan Sullivan has a great story. He is blogging about his journey from obesity to getting healthy and he does it with a strong dose of humor and wit.
Anyone who has struggled with being overweight can relate to his story, and his photos of his weight loss are incredible.
What Inspires Me: As a personal trainer, I can definitely appreciate his effort to get healthy and he is doing whatever it takes to do that. What inspires me the most is that Ryan has chosen to put his health first because of his family and wanting to be able to enjoy a better quality of life.
What Are You Waiting For?
Take some time to read through these blogs and hopefully you will find something that ignites a passion in you.
What inspires you? I would love to hear about it and if you have any blogs that you think could be on this list, please leave a comment and let me know.

Kim
Steve, thanks so much for including us in your picks, you made my weekend!!! As you know, I love your blog as well, it works as fuel to crawl our way out of our cubes as quickly as possible, and provides quiet a few laughs as well.
Steve
Hi Kim,
You guys rock. I’m very jealous of your soon to be adventures. I travelled a lot in my 20’s, but never overseas. You are going to have the experience of a lifetime and one very people will get to enjoy.
Joe
Hey Steve, Thanks for including me here with such great blogs. I’m glad you’ve been enjoying BIT.
Steve
Joel,
It’s my pleasure. It’s good to see someone doing all the things I never did. Enjoy your freedom for as long as you can!
Yuri
Jacob Sokol’s Sensophy is one of the best blogs out there!
Thanks for introducing some of the others — haven’t seen them before, I’ll look into them 🙂
Steve
Sensophy is a definitely an inspiring site. I have had the chance to talk with Jacob on the phone and he is a great dude. He’s got tons of passion and it’s so great to see that in someone. Hope you enjoy the others 🙂
Jacob Sokol
Yuri! Thrilled that Sensophy speaks so loudly to you dude. Thanx for the uber-kind words. Chat soon!! -=)
Laura
This is a GREAT post, Steve! I love your insights into what makes these blogs stand out among so many others. REALLY connecting with people is all about sharing what inspires us and finding those who feel the same way. I’m looking forward to thoroughly checking ALL of these out. Thanks!
Steve
Hi Laura,
Thanks for the compliment! I realized that I don’t acknowledge other bloggers as much as I should. There are so many awesome people out there with great stories. I’ve spent A LOT of time online looking for great sites and plan to share more soon 🙂
If you are really looking to connect, make sure you hit Nick up. You can find him on Twitter@Nicholas_Cardot.
Patricia@lavender-oil
Hi Steve
What a lovely surprise. Thank you so much for mentioning my small niche blog and me in your post. Very generous of you to do that.
The past few weeks I haven’t been blog hopping or commenting as much as I usually do. The reason being I have been busy writing articles and speaking with my marketing friends on Skype.
With a new addition to my marketing plans, have been on yet another steep learning curve with some of the best in the business. They are wonderful friends to me and I am learning so much from all of them. And their generosity in sharing overwhelms me at times.
Doing a FREE affiliate course with Alex Whalley and this is very apt for me as just added Amazon products to my store. He has been very generous in sharing his own success with these products and has put so much detail into each module that I am really enjoying learning how he does it.
Thanks again Steve for the mention. A few of the people on your list I haven’t met so will now go check them out.
Patricia Perth Australia
Steve
Patricia,
I have fallen in love with your dedication to helping people through your commenting. You are sacrificing a great deal of your time to help others and I know you’re not just doing it to build links.
You seem so genuine and that’s what inspired me to write about you.
It’s so great to see that you are getting involved with other bloggers. It’s sooo important. You are definitely making things happen!
Patricia@lavender-oil
Thanks Steve. When I began commenting on other blogs I didn’t know about backlinks or link juice lol I just wanted to let the blog owner know what I had learnt from the post and acknowledge them.
I’m glad I didn’t know too much when I began, cos I got into good practices with the right motives; which for me is important.
I want my blog and business to be built on honesty and integrity and hopefully that is what is happening.
Because I have had so much help myself just want to be able to give back to this amazing community I am active in.
Patricia Perth Australia
Steve
Patricia,
I love your style 🙂
You are a true example of someone giving without looking for something in return and it’s refreshing. It seems that your good karma is coming back around and people are looking to help you as well. I hope you crush it in 2011!!
Jacob Sokol
Steve dude… Thanx for the link-love and care-share yo. Appreciate your site and even more so your momentum in life. Keep up the magnificent work – i know you’ve got some people depending on you!!
Steve
Jacob,
It’s my pleasure brother. Keep on inspiring……
William Tha Great
Hey Steve,
Thanks for the awesome post!
I have had the chance to visit a few of these blogs and i can personally tell you that they are wonderful. I love visiting inspiring blogs, because the way I see it is that everyone needs as much inspiration as they can recieve.
The more inspiration you recieve the less like you are to slow your pace or give up all together. That is the last thing you ever want to do, because then all that time would of been a waste.
It would be awesome if one day people write blog post about me! Then i would feel really really special like im sure patricia does. She really is the commenting queen that I have sen around the blogoshpere.
Thanks again!
God bless,
William Veasley
Steve
William,
Glad you checked out some of the blogs, they are awesome! As long as you keep working on what you love and learn from others, you may very well start getting noticed.
I’ve checked out your blog and have a few ideas for you. Email me if you care to hear them.
Jonathan
Thank you for the flattering inclusion here, Steve! You’ve definitely rounded up some pretty inspiring people, and a few that I hadn’t heard of.
Now I’m off to go do some reading… I look forward to chatting with you!
Steve
Jonathan,
I’m just glad I found your blog! Keep up the good work.
Tristan
This is awesome, Steve! Thanks for the mention, man!!
Yes, I do spend a LOT of time on other people’s blogs. Commenting is great because
1) it builds the relationship between you and other bloggers
2) it gets traffic back to your blog
3) it gets links back to your blog
4) it’s super easy and fun, plus you learn a lot of stuff from reading all those other blogs!
The downside is that it DOES take quite a bit of time. But hey, doesn’t everything in blogging?
There are actually some blogs on here that I’m not familiar with, so thanks a bunch for pointing me in their direction.
Thanks again!
Steve
Hey Tristan,
I love comments, they complete me! And you, my friend are the master of comments. I only wish I had more time to comment. I know so many good blogs and I just don’t have a lot of time. I did read your article about commenting on a large number of blogs in a short amount of time. I will have to revisit that one.
And you are right on about blogging being time consuming. I could spend 12 hours each day working on my blog and still feel behind. I guess that’s normal though…
Patrick
The Friendship Marketing post is really quite extraordinary, thanks Steve for passing this on. I feel I owe you something in return…
http://manvsdebt.com/green-bay-packers/
I really loved this post and I’m not even familiar with American Football.
Steve
Patrick,
Glad you liked Nick’s post. He is an incredible writer. If you have time, read through his archives. I am also a fan of Adam Baker, he does a great job on his site. Thanks for the link
Caleb Wojcik
I’ve been a fan of Joel’s at BIT for a while now, but hadn’t heard of some of the other blogs you posted here.
Even just the few minutes I just spent on Site Sketch 101 have given me some great ideas.
Steve
Caleb,
Nick at Site Sketch 101 does an incredible job. I would strongly suggest reading through his archives, there is a wealth of useful information in there.
Caleb Wojcik
Thanks Steve, I’ll check the archives out.
Giovanna
Love the list of blogs, Steve!
Check out http://www.pursuingourpassion.com – a blog from two women who quit their daily grind and started their own business. Now they blog about inspiring others to do the same- and are starting a second business!
Steve
Thanks Giovanna,
I just read a bit of their blog and it’s very inspiring. I love their stories and their outlook on life. I appreciate the link 🙂
Emily Henning
Amazingly awesome information. Great resources. Thanks so much!