This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

I’m not going to lie. I started this blog to try to make money.

A year ago, I discovered guys like John Chow and Shoemoney. I saw sites like Problogger and thought, ‘Man, I could do that! Let me at it!’

A year ago this month I started the Howefitz blog, and I have not made one cent. In fact, I’ve lost a few. (I’m lookin at you, aweber!)

But the fact remains that my blogging intensity has increased during the course of the year, and I have no intentions of stopping, because this is fun!

If you go back to the beginnings of this blog (and I highly recommend that you do NOT) you will see that I had no direction. I was looking for ways to build readers and make CASH! I was reading all the pros tell me to build networks and find other bloggers and SEO and blahblahblah.

Who wouldn't want to blog moments like these?

My wife kept saying, ‘Well, it looks like the guys that are making money on the internet are blogging about how to make money on the internet.’

Right. And you should always write what you know. And I (obviously) do not know how to make money on the internet.

Then, as these things go, I discovered dad-o-matic, and then dad-blogs.

(Sound of needle being yanked off a record) Wait. Wait one minute. There are dads. Dads on the internet. Dads on the internet blogging about their families.

…

And…

…they were interesting!

These weren’t boring home movies of someone else’s vacation or their kids taking their first step, this was all about the emotions of having a family. This was about supporting each other and giving each other advice.

All kinds of dads: stay at home dads, gay dads, married dads, single dads, divorced dads…

All these dads were rising to the challenge of trying to put into words their thoughts and feelings about being a dad and all the challenges that come with it!

I sat back in my chair and exhaled. This was something I could talk about! You never run out of material from your family! There’s always somebody saying or doing something funny or heart warming! I love being a dad! I can do that!

So I haven’t made a dime. As you can see, the google ads are gone, there’s very little in the way of advertising here. I occasionally review a book or movie and try to hock it through my amazon associate account, but nobody ever buys.

What I’ve earned through this blog is more important than any monetary gain. It’s become a writing exercise. It’s become a way for me to put words and thoughts together, sometimes coherently, in a way to elicit an emotional response from others. But mostly, it’s made me a lot of friends.

Ron Mattocks, author of the blog Clark Kent’s Lunchbox and the upcoming book Sugar Milk said it best recently:

The thing about blogging that makes it so different from just writing is that it’s about community, and community requires interaction. … The blogging community has become very real to me, almost as real as calling up people that are physically in my area, and meeting them for lunch; in some cases I interact with blogging buddies more than my own extended family.

That community is what has made me not only blog my heart out whenever possible, (Mainly when everyone else is asleep, like right now…) but what has also inspired me to write the sporadic column ‘Kids Play On The Net‘ at Dad-Blogs, among other unpaid projects I have in mind.

Plus, I absolutely love having a venue where I can show that I have the Greatest Family On The Planet™.

So, I would like to thank you all for the continued support, and hope that you like hearing about my life as much as I enjoy living and sharing it!

Here (in no particular order) are some friends I’ve made through blogging and their blogs:

Eric Bolton of Juggling Eric and Marvel Off the Clock

PJ Mullen of Real Men Drive Minivans

Apok of Knee Deep In Kids

Mocha Dad

Ron Mattocks of Clark Kent’s Lunchbox

Ciara of Ciara’s Ramblings and Whatnot

Weasel Momma of World of Weasels

Dad Unmasked

Melisa with one S of Suburban Scrawl

Jason of The Devoted Dad

Kevin W. Grossman of Get Off The Ground

Surprised Mom

Bella Daddy

Mr. Man of Dear Mr. Man

Thanks a lot guys, I’m just reeling this list off the top of my head, if I missed you, hopefully you’re on my blogroll on the sidebar. If not, let me know!

***Sidenote***

Today is the last chance to enter my Paying Forward A Random Act Of Kindness Giveaway! For details, simply click the link!

As a Daddy Blogger, I’ve gotten frustrated lately that it’s fairly hard to find fellow Daddy Bloggers. Every few months or so I Google ‘Daddy Blogs‘ for something interesting. Today I hit the mother, er, fatherload:

I found dad-blogs.com.

Dad-blogs.com is an online community designed for and by bloggers who happen to be fathers. I really enjoy this site and am proud to be a member of it. I can really see the potential for dad-blogs to become THE central hub for daddy bloggers online. In just a couple of months, they’ve already attracted the likes of Wayne Parker, daddy blogger from about.com, so you know they’re gaining clout!

I’ve enjoyed exploring this site today.  The Comments section says ‘Write a Comment Slacker’. The $100 giveaway that’s going on right now is advertised by saying, ‘Win beer money!’ In other words, the target audience is definitely men! Women are allowed in too because, let’s face it, someone has to keep us in line!

There are plenty of activities to keep you busy such as a forum and groups to join or create if you want to dig in to a topic a little deeper. They just introduced a feature called ‘DB Investigates’, where they ‘take a hard look at a subject matter from all angles in order to spark debate and find solutions to a wide range of topics.’ Up first for the month of March? Well, we are men, so we’re talking about sex. (I’ll take bets right now on whether or not that’s the topic for next month too! )

If you’re a daddy blogger looking for a place to share ideas, or just a daddy looking for advice and a sympathetic ear, dad-blogs.com is the place for you!