It has been 4 months since I started blogging. Not much has changed since. People, as they did before, still get surprised that I can write. “Yes I can write.” I tell them with the proud grin of a four year old. In the last six posts I have received as much appreciation as criticism. I also found some genuine compliments like “Dude that’s actually good!” a little disconcerting. Most of all, the blog managed to get 700+ hits which are about a hundred times the number of hits I had expected! It has been a great experience and I thank you all for the support and encouragement.
Seven Things I Learnt by Blogging
1. A blogger’s life revolves around the ‘number of hits’ on his blog. A blogger would do anything from spamming on Facebook communities to commenting on popular blogs to secretly using other people’s computers to hit the blog a few times (since your own visits to the site are not counted) in order to increase the number of hits. I even summon my Orkut account from the dead, to help me get a few hits. (Warning: If you come across my blog link on the website of a ‘performance-enhancement drugs’ company, it is pure coincidence. I did NOT promise to buy their products if they got me a few hundred hits!)
2. Every blog should have a theme. I realised this after my blog got dropped from a blogging contest in favour of a blog about the different sizes and shapes of turds. If you have nothing to say when people ask you what you write about and you say “Everything!” people usually think you’re another crappy poet or the guy who puts up nauseatingly emotional quotes on Facebook that get a hundred ‘likes’ from girls. From this point on, the theme of my blog is HEPTA-MICRO-SOCIO-ECONOMICS.
3. More trading happens in the blogging world than in a stock market. Everything here is quid pro quo. You read mine, I read yours. I’ve had to read 700 different blogs to be able to get the 700 hits on mine!
4. I desperately need to reduce the length of my blogs which has been growing exponentially since the first one. I have had to change my tagline from “Short but not sweet” to “About Everything”. I have started meeting people who tell me they could find time to read only a portion of my latest post. And I would have conveniently ignored these signs, had a close friend in his very honest opinion about the length of my blog, not said “Increasing? I though the length of your posts was decreasing and that is why you started publishing seven posts together!”
5. Having a blog has no awe value whatsoever. Not even a 6 year old thinks it is amazing anymore. The 6 year old probably has a blog more popular than yours. Saying that you have a guitar or a 12 megapixel camera is more impressive even if you don’t know how to properly hold either. Saying “Have you read my blog?” evokes the same response in a room full of people as a hand-grenade without a safety pin does. Do not be surprised if someday you hear something like: “Oh you have a blog? Big deal! Oh wow you have a phone? Awesome!!”
6. I realize I may have gone the Ayn Rand way on my blog a few times after I received comments like “Dude that was amazing. I didn’t understand much of it but whatever it was, it was great!”
7. Never commit to a number of things that you’ll say. If you see the last few points on my posts you would notice that I am always stretching to reach my committed seven things. I wish I could change this blog to a-couple-of-things :(
Seven Things I Learnt by Blogging
1. A blogger’s life revolves around the ‘number of hits’ on his blog. A blogger would do anything from spamming on Facebook communities to commenting on popular blogs to secretly using other people’s computers to hit the blog a few times (since your own visits to the site are not counted) in order to increase the number of hits. I even summon my Orkut account from the dead, to help me get a few hits. (Warning: If you come across my blog link on the website of a ‘performance-enhancement drugs’ company, it is pure coincidence. I did NOT promise to buy their products if they got me a few hundred hits!)
2. Every blog should have a theme. I realised this after my blog got dropped from a blogging contest in favour of a blog about the different sizes and shapes of turds. If you have nothing to say when people ask you what you write about and you say “Everything!” people usually think you’re another crappy poet or the guy who puts up nauseatingly emotional quotes on Facebook that get a hundred ‘likes’ from girls. From this point on, the theme of my blog is HEPTA-MICRO-SOCIO-ECONOMICS.
3. More trading happens in the blogging world than in a stock market. Everything here is quid pro quo. You read mine, I read yours. I’ve had to read 700 different blogs to be able to get the 700 hits on mine!
4. I desperately need to reduce the length of my blogs which has been growing exponentially since the first one. I have had to change my tagline from “Short but not sweet” to “About Everything”. I have started meeting people who tell me they could find time to read only a portion of my latest post. And I would have conveniently ignored these signs, had a close friend in his very honest opinion about the length of my blog, not said “Increasing? I though the length of your posts was decreasing and that is why you started publishing seven posts together!”
5. Having a blog has no awe value whatsoever. Not even a 6 year old thinks it is amazing anymore. The 6 year old probably has a blog more popular than yours. Saying that you have a guitar or a 12 megapixel camera is more impressive even if you don’t know how to properly hold either. Saying “Have you read my blog?” evokes the same response in a room full of people as a hand-grenade without a safety pin does. Do not be surprised if someday you hear something like: “Oh you have a blog? Big deal! Oh wow you have a phone? Awesome!!”
6. I realize I may have gone the Ayn Rand way on my blog a few times after I received comments like “Dude that was amazing. I didn’t understand much of it but whatever it was, it was great!”
7. Never commit to a number of things that you’ll say. If you see the last few points on my posts you would notice that I am always stretching to reach my committed seven things. I wish I could change this blog to a-couple-of-things :(
Well Buddy ive seen you grow with every single post. Nice that you have a theme for the blog now, we'll finally get to see some direction here :P
ReplyDeleteGood job dear... a future columnist in the making...
ReplyDeleteThe quid pro quo part stands out, fellow blogger feelings :P
ReplyDelete