Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Way We Blog


It has been two good years of blogging. Ups and downs really.

You know the excitement when you first created your blog. You don’t even know what name to use: Real or an alias. Then you ponder deeply on the title, and think hard only to end up including “thoughts” in your blog name. Then you type your first ever post. Hello, world that is, or whatever your first post title is. Then you begin to explore the complexities of the blog design and settings. You smile when you get your first commenter. You reply with excitement and quickly follow your visitor’s link.

“You have a very nice blog. Thanks for visiting mine.” you say truthfully to your new friend. Then follows the exchanges of visits and comments. You do every effort to make a friendly comment, and at the same time put enough care in your every post.

Later on they ask for ex-links. “What is an ex-link? What is a blogroll?” you ask. Then your friends begin telling you what to do. You add a blogroll, a tagboard, and everything else your friends adorn in theirs.

It took you half a year before you realize that your blog design sucks. It is not actually, but you begin to envy others with beautiful blog templates. So you decide to change templates, and change templates again, till a smile returns to your face.

After a week or two of non-posting and non-hopping, you post an apology citing reasons here and there. Friends assure you that it’s fine. Then you realize that others don’t do an apology at all.

A year of happy blogging, you earn a page rank. But you don’t know what it is or how your friends know about it. Then someone mentions paids post and the PR. You check them out and even comment innocently on a sponsored entry.

A few months after your first paid post encounter from a friend’s site, they begin to flaunt their earnings. What dollars? Is it true that they earned a thousand bucks or more a month? Then you find out it’s pretty easy. So, you join the bandwagon and fill your blog with 30 to 40 posts a month, half of which earns at least $10 per post. Not bad, eh as you begin to see money flowing in your paypal account.

But at the downside, you begin to lose your usual commenters, and even readers. Deep down within you know you worked hard on every post, even incorporating your own experience that even without a sponsor you’d write them anyway sometime in the future. But there are times when you even loathe some of your own entries. So you can’t really blame them. Then now, Google takes away your prized PR, and along with it, the monetary opportunities.

I sit down and ponder. 2 years of ups and downs in blogging. The motivation is really not the money, the PR, or the approval of friends. I blog because I love to.

18 comments:

jho said...

Congrats! 2 years ka na!

Anonymous said...

Congrats! And good luck on your 2 blogs.

Anonymous said...

wow.. parang nakaka relate ako sa sinulat mo. nice nice. Congrats!

and yes.. we do blog because we love too... additional na lang ung paid posts!

more power! :P

Lazarus said...

thanks jho, gladita and tina!

Toe said...

Happy 2nd Anniversary of blogging Lazarus! I love this anniversary post. It's very honest and it's something that a lot of people can relate with, including myself.

When blogging gets difficult, it's always good for us bloggers, especially personally bloggers, to remind ourselves why we started blogging in the first place.

But having said that, I have nothing against earning money from blogs. In fact, I want to do that someday too. I just don't have the time right now and when I do, I'm too lazy.

Tinunuy said...

Let's just say that paid posts are just our side line. Hehehe.

I can relate well to this post. happy 2 years of blogging!

Anonymous said...

Happy 2nd bday Leftover Thoughts! :p

Panaderos said...

Happy 2nd Birthday to Leftover Thoughts!! May you have many more birthdays to come!

As for blogging, follow your heart. As you said, you do it because you love it, regardless of page rankings.

Anonymous said...

happy birthday bai lazarus!

Gypsy said...

I hear you, brother! Everything you said is exactly how it was for me in the blogger's journey--except for the paid posts..Happy anniversary and Happy Easter pud! :)

Anonymous said...

uy late ko! nasakit man gud. anyway, hapi anibersari! naa pay left-over sa handa? :)

ingon si google tagaan daw ka niya gip sa imong anibersaryo. kay 2 years man, mao na pr2 sad. alkanse ka ug 2 da!

Anonymous said...

otro pud kong late ay. abi man gud nako'g laban gyapon ni pacquiao. happy birthday sa blog ni Lazarus, sa katigulang ani nga blog nanganak naman gani ug ceblogger. your ability to maintain more than one blog in such a regular fashion only means you have a lot to say and have the ability to say it in different ways. As for the page rank, there's ways of getting it back, if you really want it back. Pero kung mathematical equation pa: Readers > PR (readers "is" greater than page rank). Happy birthday blog!

Anonymous said...

btw, where's your blogcebuworld? been getting 404's all morning.

Anonymous said...

i can relate :) happy 2 years!

Anonymous said...

nice entry, lazarus! nakakarelate ako hehe. happy 2 years! malapit na rin ako magbday, 2 years na rin..next month...

happy easter!

AJ said...

and...

whether u win or not in the FOBW contest..its obvious that u won the hearts of many global bloggers..so press on for more fruitful blogging years!

and continue to shine.
i remain here :)

julai said...

hi lazarus, congrats at 2 years kana pala sa blogosphere..keep blogging po and belated happy easter.

Asghar Javed said...

This post... I am already linking you on mine. It seems some one has told you about how "I" blog ;-)