Five Lessons I learnt in 2010?

The year 2010 has almost come to an end. Just after 28 hours in my country, we are going to celebrate the New Year 2011. It is very important time to look back at the past one year. Today, I was thinking that what are the lesions that I have learnt from the past year. I am going to share with you about the five important things I have learnt in the last twelve months.

Health is really Wealth: Yes, I now totally agree with this proverb. My health really suffered in the last one year and only in the last two months, I have started to feel better. I have started to feel that all the poison from my body is gradually removing and as a result I am fresh. This freshness is very important for me. Now, I have a lot of hope about 2011 only because my health has improved significantly.

Ups and Downs are natural: I am like a focused kind of person who always wants to win and become successful. There is nothing wrong in it because if you want to do well in life you must be always focused. However, taking it to extreme can land you to disasters. This year, at one time, one of my Blogs could get one million page views in just two months. At that time, I almost killed myself by putting too much pressure to do better. Now, looking back on it, I feel that instead of trying too much, I should have taken it easily and I could easily sustain that level of success. Last month, that Blog got only 22,000 page views- just 5% of what I got in July 2010.

Changing eating Habit matters:  In 2010, with all the sadness and sufferings, I achieved a very important victory over myself. Eating habit was a very big problem for me for many years. I was too much fan of spicy, oily, frying and junk foods. However, these days, my eating habit has become normally and I am really impressed with myself for this kind of radical change.

I feel that my strong emotional attachment and love for my wife has been in the main reason behind this success. I just want to stay healthy and live a long life with her.

In the past, I tried a lot about it but I could not change because I didn’t have a good reason. Now, I have a very good motivation for this matter. So, you should try for changing your eating habit because it will help you to stay healthy.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race: I am too much fond of speed in everything. I read fast, I eat fast and drink fast. I like to do anything rapidly. This has been a big lesson for me in 2010 that going for speed can never bring success for you. Yes, any time I tried to achieve something in a short time, I could but I could not sustain it. Sustaining success is really very important. So, I have decided that in 2011, I will try to take life easier and I will not push myself in anyway for anything. I will try to work in a normal pace.

Never Give Up: 2010 has been very tough year for me. Many days, I felt very sick and mentally frustrated. I just felt that I could not continue any longer and I really felt very upset. If you go through the entries then you will perhaps get an idea what went through my mind in the whole year. I have tried to write about my condition in this Blog. The most important lesson is that try to be always optimistic and hopeful about life. Yes, when you are at your worst conditin, yet, never give up because human life does not stay the same way always. Just one year ago at that day of 2010, I really could not sleep whole night and I was awake.

Now, I have no problem of sleeping and my health has surely improved a lot. That is why, I have learnt a very important lesson of always having positive ideas and positive energy. Just tell yourself that if really the worst days is going to come to you, if you try to accept it and live through the rough passage of time. Sooner or later, you will have better condition. It is bound to happen. I believe in God and when I feel in danger, I try to  pray to God. Even if you do not believe in God- no problem. Just try to optimistic and this really can help. 

At last Coming back to Full time Professional Blogging

It has been nearly one and half years that I could not work regularly. In fact, it has been indeed one and half year that I was out of full time job. My job is professional Blogging and for the five years almost, I have been earning my bread and butter and paying all the bills with professional blogging.

It is not that in the last 18 months, I was totally out of blogging but I could never work full time even for one month.

Now, the good part is that I have been able to comeback and from next week or the New Year 1 January 2011, I am going to again work just like the past. I clearly remember my experience of five years ago. At that time, I totally tried for learning, blogging and earning some money from it. It was at first very difficult and impossible.

I had no idea how to get page rank or traffic. I also had very little knowledge of Adsense or other advertisement programs. I almost had no idea about search engine optimization or getting good traffic from search engines like Google. I also did not know about marketing strategies that would bring good traffic for my Blogs.

In the last five years, I have learnt a lot and I personally feel that I have all the knowledge to have become a successful blogger. In fact, in 2007 and 2008 or even in the first half of 2009, I had decent amount of success in professional blogging. Then what happened is that at the peak of my career or performance, I became very sick and my wife also became very sick. As a result, I lost energy of doing full time work and I lost my freshness. It has been a very difficult battle for me but I feel excited to be able to make a comeback.

This South Asia Blog is my most favorite blog and I hope that from now, I will regularly update it for all of you. I can see that now, more than 900 Feedburner subscribers as well as 142 followers are with South Asia Blog. This is somewhat the sign of a successful blog and at one stage, its Alexa ranking reached to 30,000. It happened just five or six months ago and at that time, South Asia Blog was one of the top 30,000 websites in the whole world. It was an amazing achievement and we got it mainly because of our dedication and effort.

No, I do not have the dream of making it a blog that would generate thousands of page views everyday. Instead, I want to focus on writing about business and economy of the South Asia region. Yes, sometimes we will change the topic like sports, entertainment or even about election or major political events. However, main focus will be always on business and economy.

I also want to write more about the other seven countries in addition to India. In the past, what happened is that I noticed that most of the entries were mainly about India because people search about India related topics. This time, I want to make a change and I want to try to cover the all the seven countries.

I know that it is not possible to come up with the quality that I had because I had a long break. It will take some time but I will try my best to put good content that would become enjoyable for all of you. I know that some of you missed the blog a lot and I am really sorry for it.

Life is very difficult and at times life can become quite devastating for all of us. Fortunately, I have started to feel much better and let us see if we can produce good content for the blog in the next few weeks.

Professional blogging is full of stress and if you are a professional blogger like me then from my own experience, I would like to request you that never put too much stress on your health. Also, never put too much stress on your mind.

Do not use all of your will power to become successful in blogging because then you will suffer a lot. At one stage, you will suffer nervous break down and it will become very difficult for you to make a come back. This is the thing happened to me and especially in the last one year, I could never work continuously even for a month. When I was trying to make any comeback to professional blogging, I failed and I could not sustain any kind of consistency.

Now, when I am writing this entry today, I feel much much better and I am very hopeful that things will become better for me from now. In the five years, I have received a lot of visitors, a lot of comments, some decent amount of success and praise and some decent amount of income. Blogging has given a lot to me and I am happy that I could survive the recession and bad health both. Now, if the time has come for me to again start with fresh health and mind and fresh optimism. Thank you for all of you for being with me and for reading my Blogs on a regular or irregular basis. 

Ten Reasons You Should Stick to Just One Blog

I have been professionally blogging for four and half years and the only regret I have is that fact that I never stuck myself to one blog. Of course, I did not have the knowledge that I have now. Bad health, recession and setbacks in personal life caused havoc to me but still, I just wish that I focused on only one blog from first. I could have become very successful in blogging. After all, I did not have any shortage when it comes to hard work and efforts. Anyway, I am writing this entry so that you think about it and do not make the same mistakes I have done.

1. Time: Time is really limited for all of us. For most of the bloggers, blogging is not even a full time job. So, you have to find time for your blogging and if you have just one blog then you can give all of your time for it. On the other hand, if you have more than one then your time will get divided naturally. Thus, less time means you can write fewer entries.

2. Money: From my own experience, I have noticed that when you focus on only one blog then it becomes easier to earn money because all of your attention is on that blog alone and it becomes easier to bring traffic and more traffic translates into more revenue. I am going to cast some light on the traffic issue later in this post.

3. Branding: When your attention is only on one blog then it becomes easier for you to develop branding. When, I started blogging and I used to write only for South Asia Biz and at that time, it became like a brand for me. Razib Ahmed and South Asia Biz were almost synonymous. Although, I do not write in that blog for two years, if you search for my name in Google then you will perhaps notice that South Asia Biz still comes in the first page of search results.

4. Skill: When you are writing about the same topic and in the same blog then your skill surely develops. I have been writing about South Asia for more than 4 years and now, it takes much less time to write about this topic then it used to be four years ago. It is natural that when you do the same thing over and again day after day then you become sharper and quicker in it.

5. Promotion: if you are a blogger then you know that just writing entry everyday is not enough. You have to spend a good amount of time promoting your content. It is surely much easier to promote a blog then more than one blogs. Because I have a number of blogs, I cannot promote any of them in a good way.

6. Health: I am a full time blogger and I can afford to spend many hours for blogging. However, still, when my health became sick one year ago, I realized that you can look after one blog even when you are sick. However, I did a very foolish mistake and I tried to write in several blogs when I was suffering from obesity. As a result, within a few months, I suffered too much mental stress and blogging or writing became an impossible thing for me. I used to enjoy blogging more than anything else. Even in the day of my wedding, I wrote an entry and then went to the place to register my marriage. Sadly, now, I cannot write every day because of suffering from too much stress.

7. Achieve: Good archive is always important for the success of any blog. When you have a healthy archive of many entries then you do not need to worry for your regular traffic. Google will send many visitors to you every day. This very blog has received more than 2 million pageviews in 2010 so far despite the fact that we could not hard.

8. Success: Now, I am totally convinced that it is much easier to make a single blog successful than trying for more than one.

9. Topic to Earn Money: I just hope that until now, you are convinced. So, now, I like to say some words about the matter of earning money. You see that when you decide to focus on only one blog then think whether the topic can earn enough money. Do some research on the topic and take a look at the niche. Take a look the top blogs in your field. You will find your answer.

10. One Child and One Blog: I live in a country which is perhaps the mostly densely populated on earth. The main reason is that many poor people do not listen to the advice of the government and take several children. As a result, they cannot look after their children. Perhaps, the same way, if you have 5 children then it is not easy to look after all of them. The same is true about your blogging life. Think of a blog like a child. A blog needs a lot of attention, care, time and money just way the way a child needs.

You should read this one: Running Multiple Blogs: Advantages vs. Disadvantages

So, are you convinced? 

Blogging has grown Exponentially in most parts of South Asia

Around one-fifth of world population live in South Asia but the number of blogs from South Asia is still not that significant. Blogging in regional languages (Bangla, Hindi, Tamil, Urdu etc) of South Asia could not even make in to the report of The State of the Live Web, April 2007. Rezwan is Regional Editor for South Asia and he has been trying for five years to promote Blogs and Bloggers from the region. He covers South Asian Blogosphere almost on a day to day basis in Global Voice Online. 

Rezwan has a personal blog called The 3rd world view. He recently gave an interview to South Asia Blog about blogging in South Asia and Bangladesh. Here is the interview for the readers:

You are perhaps one of the very first bloggers from Bangladesh. What inspired you to start your own blog in 2003 and kept on blogging until now?
I learnt about blogs from a daily newspaper and started to explore. When I read other blogs from around the world I found that there were huge misconceptions about Bangladesh, mainly due to the absence of Bangladeshi voices on the internet. So I had the urge to comment on those blogs negating those misconceptions. I soon started my own blog and started to provide my opinions about my country and on what is happening around me. 
 
Now looking back to the last 7 years, how would your describe your experience as a blogger? 
During the first few years there were not many strong voices from Bangladesh. So I felt some kind of compulsion to write on burning issues back then. Now a days, there are so many good blog writers around so I feel relieved and feel that those issues are covered. However I tend to write on issues that require publicity or awareness. From mere daily ruminations blogging is for me a way of activism now. I use Facebook or twitter more to jot down my momentary feelings or thoughts.
 
What do you think is the current condition of blogging in Bangladesh right now?
Blogging has become popular among the younger generations in Bangladesh. Especially they prefer to blog in their mother tongue, Bangla which is understandable. In the near future the government will provide computers to every school in the country. So we will see an explosion in blogging. But we need to channel those interests in right paths. We need to provide them established and cause driven platforms (like environmental blogging) so that they do not get lost or waste time. 
We are also witnessing that the number of bloggers who write in English have decreased. So there is a peril that our voices will not reach the world audience. We need to take initiatives to build the bridge, sites like Global Voices Online can provide that bridge. I hope someday online services like Google will provide translations from Bangla to other languages, which can provide a solution. 
 
If we look at the blogosphere in Bangladesh, we will see that the community blogs like Somewherein, Amarblog, Prothom Aloblog, Sachalayatan (although they don’t call themselves a Community blog) are successful but we do not see personal blogs that are read by hundreds of people every day. What do you think is the reason? How can individual Bloggers in Bangladesh become successful?  
Community blogging is popular in many countries in a big way like Russia and China. In Bangladesh, we are now witnessing theme based closely knit community blogs like Cadet College blog, which is the way forward in my opinion. These can establish a good trend and contribute to the society. 
Now a days, we have so many blogging platforms and it is hard to follow good blog posts. Out of 100 blog posts you might find 5 to 10 worthy of your taste (depending on sites). 
In community blogs, a blogger sometimes feel confined. The community sites also have restrictions on double posting or the nature of postings. So I think it is handy for a blogger to have their own space where all of their writings are archived. It will be easy for his/her readers to follow his works without missing anything. That will also be a measure of popularity and success of bloggers.
 
You have been related to Global Voice Online as the Regional Editor for South Asia for a long time and you are informing the world about the blogs of South Asian Bloggers on a day to day basis. How has blogging grown in South Asia in the last 5 years? 
My efforts at Global Voices are to overcome the language and regional barriers and bridge the local blog voices with the world audience by highlighting, translating and contextualizing. Blogging has grown exponentially in most parts of South Asia as internet is becoming cheap and accessible day by day. But unlike the western world we have seen less politicians or bureaucrats using blogs in their daily affairs. The leader of the opposition in Bhutan parliament blogs. But what about India, Pakistan or Bangladesh?   
 
At this moment, you are attending Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010 in Chile. Can you share some words about the event?
Global Voices consists of top internet activists from different parts of the world. This is a meet of more than 150 bloggers from above 60 countries of the world. This was sort of a mini UN meet where we finally put a face on the familiar names and get to understand each other well.
In the summit we discussed about online freedom, impact of citizen media, censorship, activism, social media's role in conflict reporting etc. You can get details from the summit site (http://summit2010.globalvoicesonline.org/)
 
Who is your favorite blogger in Internet and why? 
I can't answer that question. Because in my rss reader, there are literally a few thousand bloggers from South Asia and across the world listed. I sometime get lost in them and there are simply too many good bloggers/blogs to name.
 
In India, professional blogging has flourished quite a bit but in Bangladesh, blogging has not become yet an income source for most Bloggers. How can we change this scenario? Is it possible for Global Voice Online to take a project to train up Bangladeshi bloggers so that they can earn money from blogging? 
We have got an interesting debate in Global Voices about blogging and money. Our volunteer authors across the world are quite popular and accomplished bloggers in their communities and most of them have their own separate profession. They blog for passion and activism but not necessarily for money. We realized that if we had enough money and could recruit other authors in place of these volunteers, we would not have so much quality content as when it becomes a mere job usually the focus and intensity deteriorates and the quality falls.
 In India there are some citizen media models which offer some amount of money for the citizen journalists' contents. But I must say that those are not the right kind of model that can compensate a really good blog writer comparing to a novice writer. Their models are mere business models but not focused or cause driven. I think to enable Bangladeshi bloggers to earn money we need to have services like Adsense in Bangla, Paypal etc. to start with. In Western world the blogger who gets more than 20,000 visitors a day probably gets enough money from advertisements to sustain his/her living. But in Bangladesh's context, if the medium is in Bangla - will we have that many readers so that one blogger can sustain from advertisement?
 But I see a promising scope for bloggers in Bangladesh. In Western world, there are some professional bloggers who are employed by NGOs, corporations and other institutions to write about specific issues. Our NGOs are sadly much behind in terms of social media. I think the donors can assert that the these NGOs should have blogs and will require to publish the opinions of the end users/recipients in blog posts/podcasts. Then the NGOs will have to recruit bloggers to perform these tasks. This can be a good career opportunity for the budding bloggers in Bangladesh.
Global Voices can certainly help train bloggers but for the earning model the local bloggers should take the initiative. We have projects in different parts of the world (including Bangladesh) undertaken by our outreach arm Rising Voices. We provide small grants to local bloggers who train citizen media techniques to disadvantaged societies. Some of the projects ceased to exist and some flourished - we have produced more bloggers nonetheless. We funded HiperBarrio, a grassroot project in Colombia (http://rising.globalvoicesonline.org/blog/category/projects/hiper-barrio/)  which has now become a registered NGO and is carrying on with their training workshops funded by local government and other NGOs.
 
You lived for the last few years in Germany. Now, you are in Indonesia. What are major differences between these two countries that you can find as a foreigner?
Germany is of course a large social welfare state with less people and more accumulation of wealth. The most remarkable thing is that they value their dignity and pride as a nation. A typical German will refuse to take what they don't earn. They are a rule based society and your neighbor will remind you if you break the law. They are a hard working nation and these traits have contributed to their progress. 
I find Indonesia a lot closer to Bangladesh, the only difference is that the Indonesia is a big country and the government has more resources. Rampant corruption, traffic, bad customer service, lazy office staffs etc found here are all familiar to us. In fact I think corruption is far more widespread here than Bangladesh. The irony is that in Transparency International index our country seems to be more corrupt because it is a perception based index. In Indonesia paying bribe to a government official is seen as a part of the culture - its termed as a gift. So in the perception index Indonesia have a better position than us. But I must admit that the people here are tolerant to other culture. Indonesia is really a model Muslim nation and it is evident from how they treat minorities. Most foods have halal certificate (including water :) here and yet there are choices of wine and pork for the other religions in a local departmental store. Indonesians don't bother if two girls are sitting in a bus next to each other, one is wearing a hijab and one is wearing a mini skirt. 
 

A Second Come back to Full Time Professional Blogging

Making a second comeback in anything is difficult and in blogging, it is perhaps even more difficult. That is what I am trying to do now. I started my career as a full time blogger on 22 March 2006 and then for 3 years, I totally gave my life for blogging. Unfortunately, things fell apart on June and July 2009 and as a result, I was out of full time professional blogging. I was hit by a number of bad things at the same time:

My wife became critically ill and I had to be in hospital with her for two weeks.

I became seriously ill thanks to a very painful teeth treatment.

Two of my self hosted WordPress blogs (including this one) lost Google traffic as the shared hosting could not keep up with the huge traffic that the two blogs attracted.

Another blogger of my company became seriously ill.

The economic recession seriously affected our revenue.

Because of missing almost 3 bloggers, our traffic decreased sharply.

It was a series of nightmares for me but thanks God that life is now coming back to normal. Today, now, I feel very good in my body and mind and most probably, I can come back to full time blogging.

I have learnt some important lessons in the last 11 months. Yes, I was almost out of action for nearly 11 months. The most important lesson I learnt was that blogging is really the best job in the world. I just tried to keep the blogs updated and I could do so. So, now, things are good and if I can just again try some hard then at least this blog will bring a lot of traffic. You can come back to professional blogging anytime you wish. Fortunately, I live in a third world country and I do not need to earn a lot of money. So, for me, blogging is indeed an excellent thing to do. 

Coming back to Blogging after a Long Illness

I have literally become sick and tired of writing in different blogs that I have been suffering from long illness for the last 7 months. It was like 1 July 2009 to 31 January 2010. Yes, long 7 months. I had to do a very nasty teeth treatment (root canals in 7 teeth) and my health became very weak as a result. Then gained 10 KG weight in just 2 months and I started to suffer from obesity. Then, I had to try to lose that 10 KG in 2 months thanks to some vigorous weight loss dieting. I am still fighting with my excessive weight.  

At last, today, I feel some fresh. So, from tomorrow 1 February 2010, I hope to make a strong come back to full time blogging. I am a blogger and this is my full time work. Really, I feel very happy to be back to my health again. In my mind, I feel very fresh too. I was taking a look at the blogs and I felt satisfied with the fact that somehow, I could keep on going despite the fact that I could not work that much.

Before, this blog (South Asia Blog) was my main blog and I used to work hard for it. It was tragic that I had to change hosting in June and changed blogging platform from WordPress to Blogger in June 2009. After doing that I became sick and in July and August traffic decreased substantially. However, since September, things became better. Even in January 2010, the blog received 66,000 page views. Last month, it was 90,000.

I am very happy with the way things are going on. Well, I have to admit that revenue suffered but it was mainly for economic recession. I am hopeful for 2010.

I started the blog with the goal to write quality entries about South Asian business and economy. I live in Bangladesh and I love to read about everything and anything of this region. This is my favorite place on earth and I cannot be happier in any other part of the world. I again want to write good entries about South Asian business and economy. Yes, sometimes, I will write off topic entries for two reasons: getting traffic (earning money) and taking a break from business and economy. However, I will mostly stick to my original topic and try to produce content on this field.

This long illness has done one good thing for me. It has given me a lot of time to think and contemplate. I started the blog 13 months ago in the right way and did everything write but it was my bad luck that I did not have any idea of shared hosting and it suffered a very big blow. I did a big mistake by changing topic in the middle and going towards sports and entertainment instead of focusing on business and economy. Yes, I got some quick traffic but I realized that it was not a good way.

In the last two months, I discovered that it is possible to get traffic even writing about South Asian business and economy. All I need is to be regular, dedicated and give my best effort. This experience has given a lot of boost to my confidence.

I discovered one thing that when you make a come back to blogging after a long illness then the first thing you suffer from is mental strength. I never have shortage of it and I like to feel that compared to the average people, I have stronger will power.

Still, I feel a bit shaky and I lack mental strength to write in the blog. However, I have to try and things will be all right after few days of trying. They always get brighter and God has really helped me at the right moment. Yes, I have noticed when things become darkest and all hopes get lost then bright time comes. So, I am again hopeful about this blog.

In the end, I like to thank each and everyone of you for your support and I like to specially thank the Feedburner Subscribers, Blog followers and returning visitors. In the last two months, the blog received nearly 200 comments. I like to thank all the people for their comments too.

So, back to business as usual for me and this blog. 

Evergreen Entries: How they can help your Blog?

Yesterday, I wrote about evergreen entries and if you have read that entry then you must know that by evergreen entries I meant that kind of topics that are always fresh and you can always read and write about them. On other words, they never lose relevance and they are not time based. I also wrote that these kinds of entries are popular among many bloggers for different reasons. In this entry, I am going to talk about the main reasons of the popularity and the good sides.

Before anything, let us talk about the problems of evergreen entries. The first problem you have to face is that you have to give a lot of time to write them and sometimes, it may take ten or fifteen hours or even more than that to write a really quality entry. In Blogging, most of the time, we can not sell out writing and in stead we have to depend on getting tragic and page views. So, spending an entire day sometimes is not economically feasible for many of the bloggers.

Especially if you live in a Western country and you have to earn a lot of money just to have a middle class life style then it can become a problem to give so many hours. The second problem is that they do not bring traffic in a very short time. In fact, you have to be very patient with evergreen entries. It takes a lot of time and some people really can not afford to have this patience. Well, I do not blame them because I am also like them in some ways and like others I want, a lot of traffic in a short time but after years of experience in Blogging I have realized that Blogging simply does not work that way.

Now, I am going to talk about how evergreen entries can help your blog and your blogging career. The first thing that can happen when you focus on writing quality evergreen entries is that they will help you to make you famous. They are very easy to bring a brand name for your blog and for you as an expert blogger. Here, I like to talk about the example of Problogger that Darren Rowse who had many blogs in the past. I remember that he had a number of blogs on different topics like digital camera review, printers, camera phone review etc. However, these days I find him focusing on two or three blogs: Problogger and Digital Photography School. These two blogs consists of mainly quality entries and because of his effort for quality, the Problogger have more than one hundred thousand Feedburner subscribers. This is quite amazing. Another shining example is Steve Pavlina.

Evergreen entries are always helpful in getting links from other blogs and websites. When you are blogging, this is a very important factor in everyway. If others link your entries then you always get some traffic but more than that your blogs become more powerful in search engines. Especially Google gives a lot of value to backlinks. In the past, I have noticed that when I wrote evergreen entries, I got links from very respectable websites and blogs. This is very helpful if you are a new blogger. When you are a new blogger then it is very difficult to get links from others. I have also noticed that if you write quality article then some bloggers and websites will happily link to you and even if you may not know about it unless you search in Google.

Evergreen entries are also attractive for social book marking sites like Digg, Reddit, Fark. I remember that once, one of my blog entries received 40,000 page views in just 24 hours when it hit the front page of Fark. Some people even get one hundred thousand page views in a day if they can make into the home page of Digg and get enough votes. When you write a good entry then its possibility of getting featured in a popular book marking site only increases.

Many people think that evergreen entries will not increase your traffic. I agree with them that these entries will not boost your traffic all of a sudden and you have to be very patient. I have already said about this matter that this is one of the draw backs of evergreen entries. However, it is not true that there will be no benefit as far as getting traffic is concerned.

In fact, when you write a long entry and quality entry which is time less it will get traffic from many key words. Sometimes you will get from key words that you even could not imagine. It happens to me and others bloggers all the time.

These types of entries are always good for getting more comments and some people would like to discuss about it. One of the entries written by my co-blogger Biplob Kishore Deb generated more than 120 comments and many of there were very annoyed with him because of his selection of animation movies. Many of them did not agree with his view and they were not shy to let their views be known.

When you are blogging then perhaps one of the dreams that you have in your heart is to get more and more comments. Evergreen entries can help you to get more comments and started discussion in your blog.

Again I like to come back to the point about traffic. Evergreen entries will help you to get regular traffic on some entries. I could successfully implement this matter in one of my blogs Techtainment in which we wrote some evergreen entries and they still bring traffic for us and although these days we do not update regularly or we don’t give so much important to it. Still, we get everyday more than 1200 page views. This is quite a good traffic if an old blog brings regularly without much effort.

In conclusion, I like to say that if you are a blogger and if you want to become successful in this field then you should always consider writing some evergreen entries on a regular basis. 

Seven bad Habits in Blogging: I wish I could Leave Them

In Blogging37, I just uploaded an entry: One entry at a Time: How to Overcome Stress in Blogging?

Needless to say that as a professional blogger, I suffer from mental stress every day. Anyway, I have given some thought and I have realized that the sources of my stress come from my daily activities. So, I am writing about some of the bad habits that I have related to blogging and this career.

1. Sitemeter: I am a Sitemeter addict and perhaps obsessed with it. I check stats almost every hour. It is not bad at first of a blog because the stats can be very helpful in guiding you. They help you to get a good idea about your blog’s condition. However, excess of anything is bad. I waste a lot of time after Sitemeter stats of my blogs. This reduces my time for more important works.

2. Adsense: I have perhaps the same problem about Adsense. I check the stats every hour and sometimes several times in an hour. It also takes away a lot of time and my main activity of writing blog entries suffer as a result.

3. Competitors: I also check a lot about the blogs of my competitors in my niches. I check their keyword condition in SERP, back links, Sitemeters (if possible), Alexa ranking, Google PR etc.

4. Digression: When I am writing an entry for a blog, I think about many other things. I also browse Internet and read other news, other things. This way, my main focus gets lost and productivity suffers both in terms of quality and quantity.

5. Google: I love Google and it is the best thing in Internet. However, what I do is to search a lot about my entries. One of my favorites hobbies is to check how fast an entry gets indexed in this search engine. Another favorite thing is to check SERP on the entries of my blogs.

6. Forums: I spend a huge amount of time on two forums every day. This is good because I learn new things but again, it curtails my time of actual blogging or creating content.

7. Sleeping: Thanks to blogging, I have developed a very odd habit of sleeping. I enjoy covering live events and since I live in Asia, major sporting events in Europe or America take place at or after midnight of my local time. This way, I have lost my normal habit of sleeping. For example, it is now 6:40 AM local time here. Unfortunately, I could not sleep and sat on laptop to browse and write.

Perhaps, none of my habits (except sleeping at day time and waking up whole night), is bad and they are helpful for professional bloggers. However, excess of anything is really bad and even dangerous. I need to focus first on writing content for my blogs and then any other thing.  

Trakkrz: A New Blog Directory to Try Your Luck

I am not a big fan of blog directories simply because most of them require that you give them a link and this way they do not care whether your blog is good or not. That is why, it gives me a lot of hope to see that a new blog directory called Trakkrz has come out and they are claiming that they will review each and every blog that is submitted and then they would include the worthy ones.

From their FAQ:

What inspired trakkrz.com?

We were tired of all the blog following sites that include any and every blogger out their regardless of quality. We wanted to build a community where visitors could come and see the latest from popular bloggers on a particular topic, get to know the bloggers themselves, and be able to comment on and highlight the best that these bloggers have to offer.

 

I had applied for this blog and I will let you know the result. Really, I do not care that much if they do not select because my blog has already got some decent amount of traffic and page rank of 6 according to Google. 

Blogging37: A new Blog from Razib Ahmed

I am Razib Ahmed. So, it is like blowing my own trumpet- sorry for that. Well, I know that some of my visitors are bloggers too and some of them want to open their own blogs sooner or later. Good thing is that blogging ha really revolutionized publishing. If you are passionate about something then you can open a blog at free of cost and share your ideas. If you are dedicated and can really produce quality content on a regular basis on almost any topic then you are bound to get some name and fame and some money from your passion. However, you need to be some disciplined and must know some basic rules.

Blogging37.com will contain mainly tips about blogging. For example, today I wrote this entry: Ten Things Every Blogger Needs to Start a Blog

If you are new to blogging and do not have that much knowledge about it then this entry can really save you some hours. Anyway, if you have time then please visit the blog.

Why So Few Successful bloggers from India?

India is the land out outsourcing and it has many of the ingredients that are helpful for success in blogging. First of all, it is a country with over 1 billion people. Thousands of graduates come out of the Universities every year who are skilled in English language. Their expected salary is just a fraction of America or Europe. High speed Internet at an affordable price is available in most of the cities. India has a flourishing media industry: newspapers, TV channels, FM radios. So, the media culture is there. There is hardly any complain about freedom of expression as it is a democratic country. Still, there are very few successful bloggers in the country. In fact, except Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration, we know of hardly any other blogger from India who is very famous in Blogosphere. Just to be clear, I am talking about the bloggers who are now living in India not the bloggers of Indian origin living in USA or UK.

Here are some reasons Why So Few Successful bloggers from India:

1. The Language Thing: Blogging is something personal and many people love to write in their own mother tongue or first language. The main problem for Indian bloggers is that the language support for their mother tongues just came within the last 2-3 years. Before that, publishing websites or blogs in regional languages was very difficult.

2. Small Market Size: Two things to talk about here. First of all, suppose if you write in Hindi or any other Indian language, the market is very small in Internet. Earning money is a distant thing. Even finding enough readers will be a difficult thing. As a result, motivation does not come easily. The same way, writing about topics related to India in English language does not bring enough visitors or money either. Don’t believe me? Just tell me the names of 10 successful blogs on Bollywood and Cricket (I don’t need to remind you that these two things are like religion in the country).

3. Indian Traffic Does not Bring a lot of Revenue: India has a flourishing middle class and it has perhaps one of the top 3 largest economies in Asia. Still, e-commerce has not taken off in the country. In other words, not a lot of money is transacted online daily here. As a result, major Advertising programs like Adsense are not keen to give good revenue from traffic of India. In fact, Chitika even do not accept traffic from India.

4. Absence of Entrepreneur Mentality: I think that of all the reasons, this should come as number one. When you are in professional blogging then you are on your own. You have to take care of everything- from writing content to uploading, promoting and even finding advertisements. The reality is that for the first one year, you just have to dedicate and sacrifice without much return. So, there is a big risk and that is why, we can find that most blogs from India are not updated after sometimes.

5. Large Companies not Interested: I still remember the day when AOL decided to buy Weblog Inc for $25 million. That happened in 2005. Very few people in India at that time were active in professional blogging. I have never heard that big Indian companies like Tata or Reliance are keen on opening a blog network despite the fact that they can easily afford to invest a few million dollars in this field.

6. Traditional mentality by the old generation: Blogging became very popular among many US companies because they felt that with this medium, they can at last communicate with the customers or potential customers in a very easy and inexpensive way. In India, most decision makers in the big companies are in their 50s and I am afraid that they still have not been able to realize the full potential of blogging as an effective tool for customer service.

7. Blogging not the Attractive Career: India is not a rich country. In fact, most people here are poor. You can find poor people living just next to very posh buildings. So, career is a very important thing for most people here. Hardly any parents dream that their children become a blogger some day.

8. What is blogging: I guess that many people in the country still do not know what is blogging. The media hardly talks about it. People know more about entertainment and sports than blogging.

9. Absence of role models: It is like a vicious circle. Because there are not many successful bloggers in India, so, most young educated people are not willing to take the risk. As a result, there is not many success stories.

10. May be Outsourcing is the Villain: Some how I feel that most Indian educated people have become addicted to like outsourcing. They want that some American or European companies would outsource their works to them and they will earn some dollars. This has taken away the mental attitude of trying something on their own or competing against the American people.

Well, I have tried to put all the reasons here that I could think of. Do you agree with me?

By the way, if you are suffering from Writer’s Block then you can read this entry: Blogger’s Block: Some Tips about How to Defeat It

Blogger Forum Suspended Posting for Spammers from India!

When I started professional blogging, one of the important things I did was to join in Blogger Forum. It was one of the best places for me to learn about the art of blogging. In fact, I gave a lot of time there and as a result, I could get a lot of benefit for my blog: SouthAsiaBiz.com. I got a lot of comments and links from the members there and it gave a great boost to my career. So, naturally, I have special feeling and memory about the site.

A few weeks ago, when I visited the site, I found that they have suspended posting and it happened because spammers from India caused a lot of problems. I am quoting their message from the home page:

“Folks, the real problems started when we passed 78% as the visitors here from India.

To hell with being politically correct at this point. Virtually all of our spam comes from India and China. There was never a problem before we hit a tipping point and most visitors started coming here for ways to make money.

There are many members from India who are productive and we value their contributions. However, that is just the way it is.

There is really no way to fight spammers who want to take the time to join, confirm their email address, manually enter the captcha symbols, and then manually post spam with 2 minute delays between posts. We put a higher value on human time then they do.

We will be back when and if a cure for this problem is found.”

I am not from India but I am from South Asia it gave me a lot of pain to think that people from my region created this problem for a very popular forum. I wish that the owners decide to bring the site again and allow members to post.