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How #blogging started for me #guestpost

Hi All!

I’m happy to have a guestpost on my blog today by Shalz, one of the most strong-minded bloggers I know you will call a spade a spade. I love the topics she writes on, be it body shaming or taking people to task for their hypocrisy. Her foodie and travel posts are to die for. Read on as she shared how her blogging journey blossomed. This is part of a guestpost marathon in December where few bloggers have come together to support each other as a community.

My blogging journey

I stumbled on the word blog in the year 2009 when I had just moved cities and was going through a terrible time in my then relationship. Bangalore was new and exciting to me with its avenues of touristy stuff to discover plus new friends to make in the city.
I was also terrible lonely and miserable; hence taking off alone for long walks to discover museums, heritage trials, food memorabilia, photo treks was some things I took up most enthusiastically.

Folks around me marvelled at my effort and suggested me to keep a diary of it all; kinda a photo album of sorts which I could show around too. That’s when the idea of an online diary struck me quite hard and I started to research “blog”.

I made a really “cool” looking blog on Word press as it was free and I loved the themes plus the navigation was pretty simple and easy to a tech retard like me. That’s it – I just started chronicling down my daily trips on it with great enthu and shared them via emails with friends and family who were keen to read about it.

Cut to 2016 when I first heard about AtoZ challenge for bloggers and that’s when I realised that my blog was not even a drop in the ocean. Through networking via twitter, I came in contact with loads of bloggers – pros in their fields; many of them quite keen to help a newbie like me. That’s when the world of self-hosted / SEO/ tail words / alt tags / and what not opened up to me and I also got a crash understanding of graphic related softwares and how to create good looking content for my blog posts.

For the first seven years of blogging I was winging it away without worrying about monetizing and influencer tricks. And I didn’t think I was doing too badly either though the traffic on my blog was dismal to say the least.

Thanks to the helpful blogging community, I soon got some understanding of the crucial SEO stuff and started to implement it as best as I could. I also read up some tutorials to dress up the blog, played with themes and finally chose one that looked the best to me. I haven’t really invested in my blog by way of themes, fonts, graphics- been using all free stuff; so my customizing options have been limited.

Only money I have spent is in community hosting via a web host company which gives me a piece of internet real estate in terms of a blog home.

I did think making money would be easy and the best career option; but soon hit earth when I realised that 99% of brands will give you “free” stuff but won’t pay a dime for the content you generate and spend time and skill on. I think very few lucky ones are successful in making substantial money this way.

Two years of scrambling around finally gave me the knowledge that this is not a steady career option for me nor am I looking to fill my home with “free” items of little or no worth.

Now I blog with a free mind to satiate my love for writing; which is the original intent of keeping an online diary for me.

Are you a blogger who makes good money or are you like me fed up of the freebies and free offers?Whats your blogging experience like?

About Shalzmojo

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An interior designer by profession, writing is a passion which coupled with travel love blossomed into this blog where I love to just “do my thing”! Be it recipes, food events, travel jaunts, fiction dreaming or even meditative musings; all of it’s taken up quite passionately on my blog. I am a serious wine guzzler and love to chase butterflies in my free time.
Pls do check out my post Your writing sucks!!
This post is written for the December bloghop #mymojo with Shalzmojo

Linking up for #wordsante with Namysaysso for every post deserves some love
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22 thoughts on “How #blogging started for me #guestpost

    1. Monetisation is tricky, especially for bloggers. The brand matters. Also like Shalz said freebies are easier to come by than paid assignments.

      How are you, kiddo? How’s school?

    2. Hey good to hear this post made sense to folks – its my experience and I would advise first timers to not chuck away a well paying job in the lure of easy money making via blogging! Trust me, to date I have not met one GREAT blogger who makes oodles of money of it. Free gifts are hardly of any use and good to get once in a while.

    1. Hey happy to hear that; I hope to keep doing so with my writings. Please dont hesitate to connect with me if I can ever assist you with some help/info . BTW you are doing great as a blogger- your posts make for a worthy reading and I look forward to them.

  1. Thank you for sharing your journey. As someone who hasn’t yet thought about monetizing I get it that it’s a very difficult choice as a career. You can probably try writing for other magazines and websites for money but in the end can it make a career, I still don’t know. Maybe by a few or by someone who isn’t in need of the money

    1. We are together on this, Namratha. I never thought of monetising too. Sounds enticing but is also an added responsibility. The writing can stand to suffer. Ofcourse, it isn’t imperative but the possibility exists.

  2. My blogging journey is a bit different. I started my first blog in 2007 as a place just to rant. I never bothered about target audiences or comments. I had fun ranting on people using txt tlk in speech, Himesh Reshammiya and even T/20 cricket. I had good fun blogging, but suddenly stopped after a year. Before starting my current blog there were quite few stillborn blogs. This year out of nowhere I started a blog just to pen down the stories rattling around in my mind. Again, initially I never bothered with audiences but in the back of my mind I knew that all my blogging attempts over the years have flopped because absolutely no one read what I wrote. With a view to change it, I started participating in writing challenges and few bloghops (Bar-A-Thon 2 was my first) and now I can safely say I have people who actually read what I write. As long as someone reads what I write, I’m content. I have no plans on monetizing my blog. Cheers, Varad

  3. Thank you for sharing…honestly i thought about making money to with blogging but thn again i hear its not that easy as it sounds. So now im just writing because i have a lot of things on my mind that i just want to write down…writing is my passion…if the money comes it comes but im not doing it for the money i guess its more fun this way

    1. Yes please write for your love of writing and stay true to it. I have turned down so many meaningless postings ( in return for money) simply because I could not identify with such content! Happy to say I am happy with the way my blogging is.

  4. I had a thought about monetizing but felt like it would limit my ways of writing as I always have to put the brand first. One of the reasons why i didn’t proceed on this thought. Even though I create a website of my own in future (for blogging) i would love to write my heart out rather than restricting my words!

  5. I have never been a fan of freebies or blogging just for the sake of them. Blogging is something that I do for myself, that has helped me grow as a writer, as a creative entrepreneur. It has led me get few freelance writing assignments, which again is a small source of income but not the end of it. No one should start blogging to earn money, if it happens while staying true to yourself and your voice, then nothing like it!

    1. so very true Aditi; I think I was initially very misled by the earning bit (thanks to some bloggers making it sound like so easy-peasy) But then experience and a few cautious words from well meaning well read bloggers put things into perspective for me. I am very grateful for their word of advise to me on this.

  6. How liberating.. to write for the love of it 🙂 I love Shalini’s blog and definitely enjoy reading her. Her own journey is interesting – thanks for sharing it.

    1. Glad you liked it, Ishi. Indeed, love for writing surpasses everything. Blogging is a part of it. I liked her journey too. There is much to learn from her.

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