5 years of Blogging

Today I complete 5 years of blogging, and I try to look back and see how this blog has evolved and how it has helped me evolve. With an average of little more than one post per week, I think I have been consistent enough in my postings. I have a small set of readers who read most of what I write and usually come back and tell me their thoughts. Without getting into the details here are some random things, in no particular order, that I experienced in last 5 years courtesy my blog:

• When you blog, you attain a bit of a public profile. People know you more than you think they know, even when you are very cautious about not writing anything personal
• Regular readers know your thought process so well that they can read your emotions even in a non-emotional post too.
• Appreciations and counter views keep you going. Though you always wish for the former, but you often do not mind the later.
• Once you have a good Google ranking, you can tell people who want to know who you are, ‘Google me’. You have an established virtual identity.
• As you keep writing, your observations improve and you start looking at things not only for your understanding but also from the point of view of sharing it with your readers. And this is evident in the average length of posts which is steadily going up.
• There have been fair amount of proposals to work that came my way through my blog.
• I did undertake a few writing assignments that came via the blog route. I did some book reviews for a business magazine. I recently did a talk show for AIR on travel writing
• During a business meeting someone kept looking at my business card, and finally asked me if I am the same Anuradha Goyal who blogs, when I said ‘Yes’, my credibility level suddenly went up and the person had ‘I know you’ attitude after that.
• A school time batch mate of mine when discovered that the blog belonged to me was so thrilled, as he was a regular reader but somehow could not relate the name and the face till I put my picture on the blog. Disadvantages of having an awfully common name!
• In all the 5 years, there was only one post where I wrote about my feeling down and I was amazed at the support that came from my readers, all of whom showed that they cared.
• Someone, after going through my blog said looks like you have too much time on hand to do all this, but have been reading my blog regularly and has recently started writing his own blog.
• I am yet to figure out a way to monetize the blog, any tips on that would be welcome. 5 years and just $102 in revenue, this can definitely be improved.

It takes an effort to be disciplined enough to write regularly, specially when you hit the writer’s block, but then there is something about the routines that keeps you going. At times I know what I am posting could have been written better, but I still let it go, so that the routine is not broken. At other times I have held back what I wrote till I was satisfied with the piece.

All in all it has been an incredible journey, which started just as an experiment following my friend Anurag Jain, but having lived it for 5 years, it has become a part of my life. There is still a long way to go, but here I am, stopping at a milestone, looking at the evolution of the blog and my public persona, and imagining the weave of the potential fabric tomorrow…:-)