My blogging history
I started my first blog on blogspot, like everyone else, “Thought Outflux” at prototypeangel.blogspot.com (it’s still there if you care to look), and wrote the standard “feelings” crap over there, like everyone else did.
I moved to wordpress, and didn’t know about wordpress.com, but went to another wordpress mu site.
After a while I lost the blog in an accident, and decided to move on to hosted wordpress. I got an account at frihost, and worked with php/mysql for the first time, and soon after, bought a domain name and started posting on it.
Chronology of Posting
I was caught up in the “Techblog” craze once upon a time. I was writing small articles on howtos, etc, and used to occasionally get some good traffic. I was careful not to digg too many of my own stories, or stumble them, etc.
Eventually, I felt I needed to stop trying to monetize, and make a humble personal blog, and started off in that direction and it seemed to work fine for me. Soon after I realized I’d like to write some tech based articles, but I wanted to keep this seperate from my personal weblog, so I got hold of PingPulse.
Right now, I just post small tidbits, and a small section of my many thoughts. This is again to see for fun, how I was a few years in the past, and how my style of writing, presentation and my emotional maturity has increased over time immemorial.
On blogspot and other things I don’t like:
I hate blogspot. Period. The reason is simple. There are thousands of voices in the world today, and all of them want to be heard. Often, you need a rough benchmark or an indicator of what’s a better voice to listen to, or which should be taken more seriously. If you have someone with “arbitramblings.blogspot.com” or “myname.net”, which would you take more seriously? (turns out the blogspot site does exist. goes ahead to prove my point)
Though there are plenty of good reading material on blogspot, no even slightly experienced blogger would ever, ever take one seriously. Save a few exceptions that started on blogspot and stayed there (like digital inspiration, etc), almost all of it is noise.
What annoys me more than anything else is the titles people give to them. Try searching for “blogspot and ramblings” on google, and you see the nearly two million blogs with “ramblings” in the title.
Ramblings is not a real english word, or at least wikipedia doesn’t seem to have it. Also searching for it is hard under blogspot noise.
On TechBlogs
I’ve always seen techblogs like any of the other big fads. While I appreciate the patience and dedication with which some people write, one thing annoys me: there’s no major skill involved. No programming language, no embedded systems, no technicalities, nothing. Anyone can do it, and when anyone can do it, I get skeptical about it.
Think about it, several people go through years and years of training to write software, design hardware, test things, market them, etc, etc, and here you have anyone… nearly anyone, with a good idea of the current happenings in technology giving their two cents and people actually listening.
On My hype ideas
I always used to build blog-castles in the air. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt it’s that: If you have something good enough, people will come to you. you don’t need to go looking for them. I’ve had a few surges in traffic. I wrote a good article and people started to come. Biggest of all was my OneClick plugin for wordpress, which gave me more than 120 incoming links, lots of traffic and about 5 measly clicks on adsense, after which I removed the adsense blocks.
I believe, or it’s my strategy if you will, to write things that’s not there elsewhere all around. If you write about “five useful greasemonkey tools to enhance google reader”, it’s something people’ve already read. Otherwise finding new downloads, tools, utilities, etc, is what can make a lot more people want to come in.
[Update]I decided to enter this part in Rishi’s “Blogging Strategy Contest“
Ultimately, perseverence is the only thing that will pay off. Wether it’s in relentless writing, learning a programming language and writing opensource software, testing out unstable operating systems, all that is painful comes with pleasure, all that is with risk comes with due reward.
nice, still that site is leeching on your posts and if you have to express my opinion on this post, I’d may have to write another post.
there is no point in hating anything on the web. you didn’t create it, so you probably don’t know what it took to. people with ramblings in their title simply gave in for word vogue and considered themselves cool, its a phase they will grow out.
and andy, writing about feelings/or the same is not crap. we know you arent much of an open book and we are fine with that. thats who we all are. people with differences.
there are lovely blogs which are entirely based on feelings, beauty lies in how they express it and how interesting of a read it makes.
most of the time, everybody is eager to write, easy on the tip are feelings, movies and daily life (not in that order). and not all of what they write counts to great literature, its only an effort with words.
yeah you wrote a plugin, thats really cool, how many of those people out there are IIT students? how many have the aptitude for understanding php and writing a plugin? think about it, blogging is not one source not for one person not for one reason.
also if you are on a platform for free expression, you might as well expect a good amount to things that come up your liking. thats..very normal.
tech blogs aren’t fads(if they would be , they’d fade away long time ago), they are a reason for circulating news, variety of opinions and an illusion of easy money. too bad everybody realized how every other person is looking for that, and jumped in the pool.
i always like to negate someone’s opinion simply because a good argument is good exercise for thinking…lol no the above opinions are something i will stand by.
last bit. very good post, very critic in taste.
@sindhu, I’m perfectly fine with writing about feelings. I support that, but I don’t support a singular post called “my views on life and love”.
And it’s perfectly normal to dislike things. I don’t vandalize or speak out openly (unless on my blog, where it is my intellectual property)
And about the plugin and iit students, I daresay not more than three or four of the 6000 in my university has even heard of wordpress, let alone write plugins for it.
I stand by my beliefs, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and pure skill and effort will always excel over fads like seo, cross linking, etc.