‘Go forth and blog’

‘Go forth and blog’ - Pope Benedict to his priests

You don’t have to be a writer or a scholar to be a blogger. To start with, you don’t even need to have good English. That can be learned in the process. The good part about blogging is that you can edit your blog posts anytime you want. You are the master of your own blog.

If you try to always write masterpiece articles, you won’t last long. After a few posts you will have nothing new to say and you will be fed up of blogging. If you have something that interests you, say, a picture, a video, or a passing thought, post it right away. This makes blogs more interesting than websites; that they are more informal, more open to discussion, and makes you sound more human.

Do you feel that nobody will want to visit your blog or hear what you have to say? Well, that’s something you need to work on. In my first year of blogging, hardly anybody visited my blog. The reason? I was too humble to advertise my blog. It’s the way you present yourself baby. Not to be a show-off or an attention-monger but to show up at the right places and at the right time and say, ‘Hey people, I have something genuine to say’. Your own Facebook Wall is a good site to place a link each time you post in your blog. And remember, no one would want to read a long and boring post unless her life depends on it.

If you love photography, you can start a photo blog. Post a picture and write something about what you were feeling when you took that picture. Fashion blogs are also quite common. We have some good Naga fashion bloggers. OK, so you are a zero in fashion sense. Great. Start a fashion blog and post the weirdest dress combinations in the world. In blogosphere, that may work wonders. If you are crazy about books, post a list of books you have read and grade them in a scale of 1 to 10. That can be a conversation starter. You may give 8/10 to a book while some friend may disagree, ‘8/10? Come on, I’d give it 3/10’. Then you defend why the book deserve 8 marks out of 10. If you are going to give a speech, posting the draft speech in your blog for open discussion can be quite helpful.

My blog has done wonders for me. My love for writing was there but blogging has deepened that love into an obsession!!! It was because of my blog that Eastern Mirror approached me to be a weekly columnist. I was paid a few hundreds per article. I quit because of some problems and lack of time, but the best part is: to date, the 7 articles in Mirror Website has been hit 6,848 times, i.e. in spite of my not being able to speak well, I have found a voice. Saramati Apple story is doing fine and it featured in a newspaper in Kolkata.

I was adamant to commercialize my blog for a long time, but I did it and now, I’ve started to earn from my blog. All you have to do is place advertisements (Adsense) in the corners of your blog, and when people click them, you get paid. To date, I have had 3001 visitors from about 15 countries. To start a blog is easy. Go to www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com (there are lots of others) and register for free. As Pope Benedict bids his priests to ‘go forth and blog’; so encourage I you.

Yours,

www.thatchhouse.blogspot.com