My Topic: Possible Questions

No matter for how long I've been putting away the most important difficult part- it's time to decide on the questions! What is it I want to find out? What will be my questions and which particular network I will test them on? How will I get qualitative and quantitative data? Right now my head is exploding from defragmented ideas, but nothing is clear yet!

Relying on these posts here, here and here this is my possible plan:

1. A blogger by profession: interview a fellow blogger who works full time about all the pros and cons of this choice. Does it pay off? What are the perspectives of the career? etc
2. Blogs vs traditional media: create a survey on peoples opinions about today's value of both 
3. Blog collaborations and brand partnerships: use another survey (ask bloggers) and ask a question to brands via email
4. Successful blog: what makes a great blog? ask the question on Facebook, Formspring, Twitter and Blogspot
5. Qualitative data: interview people in person whether a) they have a personal blog b) whether they read other blogs (if yes, what type?)

My Topic: Possible Ideas

Having agreed on a general topic, I am yet struggling to decide which aspects I will be mainly focusing on as there are so many of them to blogging and right now I've got a great mess in my head! I thought I'd put together some questions/ideas to help me organize my thoughts and see what is it I want to find out. I might even use some of them as my main questions or just include them in my questionnaires/interviews.

• types of bloggers and blogs
• pros and cons of blogging
• blogging and traditional media
• influence of blogs on different aspects
• bloggers by profession
• reasons why people blog
• how to success in blogging
• making money blogging
• brand relationships

Image source:
http://sem-group.net/search-engine-optimization-blog/little-things-bloggers-crave-and-most-never-get/

My Topic: Generating the Ideas

Trying to choose a topic for my research I have to take in consideration two aspects- first of all it has to be current and actual for our time, and ideally it has to respond to my genuine interest as only that way I will truly enjoy it and be dedicated and productive.

After considering several ideas I have come up with these two that I feel relate to me the best:

1) Blogging

Having had to create a blog for this module and already running my personal blog for almost two years, this topic seems quite obvious to consider. I could use the opportunity and find out some new interesting things about "blog world" I might not know, in a way that is familiar and enjoyable to me. Maybe it will help me to improve myself as a blogger and benefit my own blog.

2) Discount vouchers and coupons

Being a frequent e-buyer myself and often looking for all sorts of discounts for my purchases, I feel that this topic might also be of interest to me. Perhaps I could find out some hidden aspects of "bargain" shopping or exciting things about sales?

The only thing that I am concerned about is a doubt that both of these topics might be too simple and banal and that I will not be able to discover anything new or interesting. But then again, having a 3,5 year old and a house to take care of, I wouldn't want to set up impossible goals for myself and get involved with something very complicated as I know I wouldn't have enough time to dedicate to such subjects. I will need to give it a hard thought in the days to come...