The D Spot

Dine Racoma

Blogging, to me, is another form of "literary" medium, a new one, as opposed to the traditional media--books, magazines, journals, etc., in hard copy. Blogging allows one person, as the owner of his/her own blog, to freely post articles in one's own writing voice/tone, without going through an editor. As it is immediately published, and one gets instant gratification. Blogging is a medium to share experiences with, and to reach out to people. This, however, entails responsibility, responsibility to one's readers, and respect for other people in the blogosphere.

I blog almost every day. My readers have to get a clear indication of how regularly I blog, so that they will know when to come back. My blogging is kinda witty, light material, open, sometimes personal, sometimes funny, sometimes poetic. My favorites are my series on "The Joy of Being a Mother".

My main objective in blogging is to put my free flowing thoughts in essays and poetry, and eventually share, educate, entertain, and sometimes inform. Blogging has done a lot of things for me:

• Blogging has made retirement easy for me. No transition, no regrets, no post-retirement blues, no sadness, ALL joy. Now, I am doing what I like doing most--writing. It's my passion. Yes, it's true, In the past, I would write everyday: endless templated memos, endless templated letters, endless templated reports. Now, I am free, I can write anything that I would like to write about, with no templates, no rules, no boundaries. Now, I am more aware of my surroundings, creating thoughts out of anything interesting that would catch my eye, taking snapshots, scribbling notes, which I could eventually shape into the art (yes, I call it an ART), known as a BLOG.


• Blogging has helped me recreate myself. Slowly, I have made a career out of writing (content, research).


• Blogging has unearthed for me new friends--they're my latest finds, my latest gems. Diverse interests, different personalities, all ages (doesn't matter at all) living in different parts of the planet, sharing experiences, expressing thoughts, crazy thoughts, sane thoughts, concocting out whatever is in their minds, new recipes, amazing photographs, anything, accepting me for all my writing worth. Sometimes, I wonder–are they really from this planet? are they for real.


• Blogging has made me keep my old friends. In the past, I would have daily lunches with best friends and weekly drinks (those margaritas are unforgettable!), mostly blah blah blah of daily toiling and bickerings. Now with thoughts passionately written, hilariously explained, secrets bared, I am sharing more than what was shared in daily lunches and weekly drinks.


• Blogging has helped me find classmates, former colleagues, former neighbors, even the dead.


• Blogging has made me understand my children more better. When I was not into blogging yet, I would PEEK into their blogs and other social networking media (friendster, my multiply, tweeter) to catch up with what they and their friends are up to. Now i would DIGEST each sharing and each emotion expressed.

Some tips on blogging: Be yourself, think about your readers. If you want to reach an international audience, use English. Mind your grammar, at least subject-verb agreement should be correct. Interact with your readers.Give personal touch in responding to comments. Visit other blogs, too, and make meaningful comments. Do not plagiarize, do not post photos of other people without either asking their permission or acknowledging their source, do not smear other people's reputation.

Here are some personal high blogging points in my blog life. When a reader sends me an email or a comment saying that I have touched his/her life, I am happy. Each time I see my daily statistics come up is a high for me. Each time I receive a comment, I am happy. High point in blog life is when others link me, others discuss about me in their blogs. When the big wigs/pioneers in blogging write about me or acknowledge my work, I am happy.

About earning money? My primary reason in maintaining my blog is to share my thoughts and experiences with my readers. I also keep my blog because it is one way of networking and introducing myself--of telling my readers that hey, here is a writer. It also showcases my writing skills. Through this blog, I was able to earn money--it has caught the attention of some people who wanted help in writing and research. I have adsense, though this is not much. I have learned from a recent local blogging summit that blogs can be monetized. I am trying to learn about how one can get passive income or residual earnings through the blogs.

The Impatient Blogger

Margot Potter

I write my blog from my art studio (which is a room in my house) each morning after my daughter goes to school. I started blogging a little over a year ago for several reasons. I’m an author and I need to promote my books and I’m a designer who needs to build a name in the craft and jewelry industry, by blogging daily I am hopefully cultivating readers. As my blog progressed I found it was inspirational to others and so my focus has expanded to allow for sharing my creative journey and my triumphs and failures with brutal honesty and a deep sense of irony and humor. My intent all along through my website www.margotpotter.com and my books and freelance work is to build and promote my brand. Brand Margot Potter. The goal is to eventually license product, host a TV show and take over the world. I hope to expand my books into the self help and inspirational mode, because that’s really where my creative work as an artist and a writer is heading. It’s all a step by step process and along the way my blog has continually expanded outward.

I don’t really pick topics as much as they pick me. Meaning, for the most part, I don’t really know what I might blather on about on any given day. I sit down and meditate on the rumblings in my brain until a topic emerges. I’ve yet to run out of things to talk about so this is working for me. My blogs are personal and not topical or regurgitated information from other sources. Everything in my blog with the exception of quotes I find compelling comes from me. I post my blog on blogger and repost it on MySpace

every day. Unless I’m out of town or ill, I try to post every day. This helps maintain my readership and keeps my blog from getting stale. I promote my blog via my website and MySpace and also through my books and freelance work. I’ve joined various blogging platforms and groups like MyBlogLog, Blogger Chicks, Housewife Mafia, Spicy Page etc. This has really helped boost my readership. My blog is also available through a variety of feeds. I try when time permits to visit other blogs of personal or professional interest and leave comments, because this is an excellent way to network and court new readers and it’s also helped me meet some fascinating people. I wish I had more time to devote to promoting the blog, but I have a very, very hectic schedule as it is with things that actually pay me money!

I think the best moments for me as a blogger happen when something I’ve written resonates really strongly for my readers. Sometimes that means wonderful comments or even private emails that tell me that I am empowering others to be creative or to work through some of their issues. That’s really ultimately why I blog, if it was just about me I’d keep a diary offline. My impetus is to show people that it is possible to do what you love and have the money follow. That the richest path is not always the well traveled one. Everything I do comes down to that.

I don’t make money with my blog, yet, maybe never. The blog is a platform for other things that make me money. I am loathe to junk it up with advertising because I’m afraid it would impede the integrity of the content. I would also never want to write a blog that was merely an advertising platform cloaked as entertainment or real content. I think it’s fine for other people, it’s just not who I am. I have considered running ads that I can control and selling them myself, but I’ve not made a definitive decision on that.

Blogging has been an amazing experience for me on so many levels. I’ve met amazing writers and designers, I’ve developed the discipline of writing every day, I’ve discovered things about myself I’d never have explored and I’ve created connections with like minded people from around the world. It’s been amazing.

See Me Blog

Lizza

I’ve always loved reading and writing, and I’ve been doing both a lot since I was a kid. I started keeping a diary when I was a teenager and when the Internet came along it was just natural for me to go from paper to digital – a relief, actually, since my handwriting never won me any awards and even I sometimes have trouble reading it.

My initial attempts at blogging were hiccup-y; I’d write something, post it, and delete it. Last year I started one on MySpace. (I know, what could I have been thinking?) Then through work that I do with my friend and business partner, Victor, on Expat Interviews, I made the online acquaintance of a Canadian lady living in the UAE. It turned out she couldn’t access my MySpace blog (it was one of the sites her ISP bans) so I started one on Blogger. The MySpace account is dead but my Blogger journal lives on.

In the beginning she was my only reader. Then as the months passed one reader became five then a dozen. People have come and gone, but a few have stayed on, bless their suffering souls. Some say they found my site through the Next Blog button, others through sites like Bestest Blogger of the Day, BlogBlast for Peace, and The Rising Blogger; some came via other bloggers.

I’ve found some great blogs via these avenues too – and made some amazing friends online. Mine is a personal site, not a business site. Its primary function was and is to be a way for me to express my thoughts and feelings. Sometimes I write about silly stuff, sometimes it’s about an aspect of life here in the Philippines, sometimes I spew when I’m feeling blue and angst-y, sometimes I write about family. I do it simply because I want to write about it, nothing less, nothing more. I won’t deny, though, that I love it when people say they like a certain post, or what I wrote on a certain day resonated with them, or when I find that somebody has linked to me without telling me – that’s always a nice surprise. I should mention that I don’t like it when bloggers exhibit this “I linked to you, so link to me too” attitude. The people in my blogroll are there because I like their blogs, not because they asked to be placed there.

Blogging is not only fun. It can also be cathartic. It’s an outlet for whatever creativity is brewing in me. It’s a personal endeavor that’s a gratifying part of my normal life, just like eating or sleeping or playing. Right now I don’t feel the need to promote my blog through aggregate sites. Getting good traffic is great, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t ever want to reach that point where getting more comments and awards and higher search engine rankings will eclipse the reason why I started blogging publicly in the first place: to write what I want to write about, not what I think others want to read. Having readers come and return is the icing on the cake, and they’re non-fattening!

Reading other blogs, though, has greatly influenced my way of thinking and the topics I write about sometimes. Also, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve learned something new from what someone else wrote. A certain writer will have a post that makes me think, so I’ll blog about that topic too and mention that I got the idea from him or her. All of us probably agree that blogging is a great way to share information, and one of the ways I like to share is to mention every Saturday a handful of blog entries written by others during that particular week.

There is a great number of terrific blogs out there: they’ve made me laugh hilariously, they’ve made me teary-eyed, they’ve left me breathless by the way they’re written, they’ve made me marvel at their visual creativity – these are some of the characteristics of blog posts I share with regular readers and passers-by on weekends. People have said they like my Blogworld Saturdays feature because it leads them to blogs they otherwise wouldn’t have known about, and that’s gratifying to know. What they don’t realize is it’s a way to turn them into blogging addicts like me, haha! I jest – sort of.

The comments section is another enjoyable part of the blogging experience. Sometimes the comments I get are much more interesting than the post itself! Reading comments can be both entertaining and enlightening. (I’ve also found a few blogs through comments left on other blogs – sometimes they intrigue me enough to want to know more about that person’s writings, and before I know it, presto! I’ve become the fan of another blogger.) Reading a post and leaving a comment is a good thing to do, but please, at least scan the post first before you say something! Reading something that’s totally unrelated to the post can make a person feel like he or she is on the receiving end of a wrong number.

The Internet is adding another dimension to how people learn and interact. Like it or not, it’s here to stay as a way for individuals to hear and be heard. Through blogging I’ve come across quite a few terrific people both near and far. It’s probably true that I will never meet these people personally, but that doesn’t mean I don’t cherish “meeting” them online. I do, and I look forward to meeting more and learning from them.

Center for Appropriate Technology {CAT} Cameroon

Center for Appropriate Technology (CAT), is NGO based in Bamenda, Capital of North West Region in the Republic of Cameroon.

Vision of the NGO, founded in 2001, is development, presentation on exhibitions and promoting of appropriate technology. For men, do-it-yourself usage of appropriate technology gives a hope of independence from central technical infrastructure. And for women handmade dolls, dressed in traditional attires from the different provinces is a means of additional income generation in rural areas. CAT also involves children in different initiatives through Youngsters Club.

CAT has develop active cooperation with foreign NGOs like Technology Transfer and Training Centre in Pakistan, Institute for Planning and Consulting, German Society for the Development of Culture (DGFK) and Bamenda University of Science and Technology (B.U.S.T).

This blog, in addition to useful information about Cameroon (one of the most diverse African countries that is called Africa in Miniature) and its culture and people, will covers CAT initiatives and projects.

Mr Njini Victor is Programme Director and Sobe Manasse, Programme Coordinator and Assistant at CAT..

Related: Snail Farming in Cameroon

Twenty years of teaching

Rolly

A blog is a journal where I can keep what my thoughts are on certain issues. I have always thought about doing a journal before and have actually started doing one on several notebooks but always, I abandoned these out of my own laziness to write. My handwriting began to get really messy when I learned to use the computer. When I discovered blogs, I found an avenue to keep a record of my thoughts and never stopped ever since.

I have posted my reason for blogging several times before. This is so that I can impart to my four kids the lessons I learned in life hoping that these would learn from these. I hope that my experiences would touch their lives, understand how and why I react to certain situations and get to know how to deal with other people in a more appropriate manner.

Writing my thoughts would make them know how I felt about something and give them more time to ponder and analyze my course of action. I am not one to give long sermons to my kids for I don't like those either when I was a young boy. They wouldn't listen if they don't want to anyway.

Furthermore, my writing could even extend to my children's children, and theirs, and so on. This way, I am assured that I would have left a legacy somehow or another to those who would have not known me personally. I am not a rich man so I can not leave them with anything material. At least, the lessons in life I teach would/could help them cope up with life that could sometimes be harsh, if one doesn't know how to deal with it.

What I did not expect was that I would have started something serendipitous. Other people began discovering my blog and had left comments of their own thoughts as well and that is neat. I got to be friends with a lot of my readers and commenter.

Unfortunately, I don't blog now as often as I used to. I get my topics from anything and everything that cross my path; a news report; an event that happened in my life; a book I read - anything that sparks an idea.

A blog template creates the identity of the blog. It gives your blog a face just like labels do with products. I have not used any promotion tool as I have not promoted my blog. I guess some people got to go my blog when I left comments with a link with mine in other blogs that I visited and read. From the day I started, I have been a regular at kwentong tambay, the Sassy Lawyer's Journal. Lately, I've added the following to my daily dose of blogs: knowread/knowrite, Under the Canopy and Blogging Bugs. There are a lot others which are linked in my blog and I have learned from them tremendously.

One of my cherished moments in my blogging life would have to be when I met in person the bloggers I have learned to admire. Batjay, Sassy Lawyer, Doc Emer. This meeting would be repeated again and again as they have become personal friends of mine. We have actually started a group of blogger friends called the Blogkadahan and we're still going strong to date.

Lastly, I have several posts that really mean to me a lot. These would be bonding moments I had with my family and friends, or posts that generated more thoughts and comments from readers.

I joined adsense before. I was about to earn my very first cash when I received a note from them that they suspect I have several illegal clicks or whatever the term is. I have been pondering over it and came to the conclusion that since I am a teacher and students in my school are probably reading my blog, they may have clicked the ads using the computers in school. Since all these computers are linked to only two servers, these clicks could have probably sent out the same IP address. So much for generating income eh?
 

Technorati Tag: Fine Art of Blogging