And blogging is contagious

It really is if you get comments & responses and good stats!

And what if you don’t? It still can be contagious when you are passionate about writing. It doesn’t have to be information dissemination or gospel preaching. It simply has to be straight, terse, impacting and real. And these adjectives can only be associated if it is straight from the heart. If you feel about the things you write. If you know what you are writing. It has to be real and not ctrl + c and ctrl + v.

Also, beside the abovementioned preaching remember to -

• Read comments
• Reciprocate
• Accept mistakes & rectify those
• Visit the commentors blog and drop in comments.

Blogging is best enjoyed when you read and you are read. Isn’t it a social thing? Personal updates as blog content is passe and dead. If it has to be personal updates, Facebook & Twitter have taken over.

Have a good time

WordPress Timestamp

Very often a blogger faces a situation wherein he foresees himself busy for the next few days and is very well aware that he cannot post new contents to his blog. This is where the Timestamp feature of WordPress comes in handy.

It allows the user to compose a blog post anytime and then post it on a pred-defined date and time automatically. Well, that is really a useful tool. I am writing this blog post well after the sunset at around 7.20 PM on 11th of January 2009 and would be setting it to be automatically posted tomorrow, i.e 12th June 2009 at 10. 00 AM in the morning, probably because I foresee myself busy with routine office chores.

However, note that the Timestamp feature doesn’t only allow post-dated posts, but also allows you to to re-wind the time line and actually set a passe date from the calendar. So I could have very well posted this message somewhere on 15th November 2006.

Well, they say time and tide wait for none; but Timestamp allows us to set the time for the tide to turn!

Why do I blog?

Since the time I started analyzing the blog stats vis-a-vis the topics on which I wrote, I found it intriguing that more popular the topic like iPhone 3G S or latest controversy or news like Mumbai attacks and so on, the more hits my blog received.

The point of concern is that more popular news / articles are always teeming in plenty on the blogosphere and still they hog the limelight. Where ason lesser known or less important topics, the blog attracted lesser hits – only from the niche category.

As any blogger would want, I too like to have greater hits and higher Google rankings. But I noticed that ever since I graduated from blogging about popular topics to the one that I really like to speak about, the traffic has been a been lesser than what it used to be.

My niche would predominantly be travel and adventure tourism in Maharashtra specifically and India on a broader canvas, photo essays, travelogues, some notes on web2.0 –> web3.0 and occasionally some random thoughts. I know that these are quite diverse topics to blog about, but then these are my favoured ones and I ‘enjoy’ blogging on these topics.

Maximum satisfaction is derived when I have more readers on my these (my favourite) topics and not the popular ones, which is a bit distorted demand to make. Eventually it grinds to a point where the question is – why do I blog? For self or for people? Probably the key lies in answer to this question.

By the way, the following figures aren’t too bad I guess -

• Blogging since 3.5 years
• Total hits 1.2 Lakhs and counting
• Visits per year – 34343 (interesting number)
• Vists per month – 2795
• Visits per week – 651
• Visits per day – 93 (Would like to touch the 3-figure mark)

All these stats when I had deserted my wordpress blog in favour of blogger, was away from blogging and some other hindrances marring my wordpress blog for nearly 15 months.

All said and done and now I am just evolving as a blogger and am really happy and satisfied – probably I have found the key.

R Reflection blog – A long journey & posession

When I do not post on my blog for 10 more more days, obviously the visitor count and search engine listings are bound to decrease, but surprisingly it is more or less hovering around the same mark for R Reflections – around 200 hits per day, which is not very disappointing at all for not a regular blogger like me.

Like most other bloggers, I would have many reasons to complain and long list of excuses to quit blogging or blog so infrequently that the blogger himself forgets that he has a blog. I leave home at 6.40 AM and come back at 8.30 PM and am dead tired. A day long staring at PC foesn’t help matters for my home desk; I am just scared away from it.

I do not blog for weeks together, but when I do the visitor count shoots to nearly 250-300 per day for the next few days. It is evident that a single blog post can do such a thing. It means that there are crawlers waiting, subscribers waiting for the post. People come to my blog posts thrugh search engines and ask for directions and solutions about the relevant. It is really heartening.

Well, I might not have realized; neither do some of the readers, but R Reflections was started in Nov 2005 (my first post on 2nd Nov 05). So it is more than 2 years old now with following stats  -

At a Glance

304	Posts	477	Comments
6	Pages	440	Approved
51	Categories	0	Pending
490	Tags	37	Spam

Change ThemeTheme Digg 3 Column with 16 Widgets

Akismet has protected your site from 13,446 spam comments already, and there are 37 comments in your spam queue right now.

Hmm.. not bad eh? I love R Reflections and howsoever I might be distant from it, its always close to me and I can never give up on it, till the time I know how to type!

Cheers ~

1 Lakh and counting

More than a lakh page hits on R Reflections so far. Its a milestone and brings in great enthusiasm for me to continue in the same vein.

Thanks for all your support and comments.

Regards,

My 300th post on R Reflections

Well, the title says it all.. isn’t it?

~Cheers~

Dwindling visitor counts, blogging and awakening!

There was a time when I was a blog-o-maniac – not too long though!

After a morning cuppa of tea or some toast n butter; a quick bite of lunch or just after finishing an assignment, blog stats was the thing that made into my to do list during any short break. I was so fanatically obsessed by the fact that my visitor count should see an upward spiral that with every improvement in the line graph that wordpress delivers my elation soared higher. Well, many say that the graph stats are wonderful addition to the wordpress list of plus, but I rather feel that it is just another obsession that hooks blogger to his domain stronger. Well tactically and businesswise this is a very gopod tool as it positively delivers what wordpress wanted – getting hooked on your wordpress blogs. Spending more time per visit and trying to engage more visitors. It perfectly worked. Kudos and cheers!

But what about non professional bloggers (who form nearly 99.9 percent of those acround the globe) who are obsessed aboutt heir page ranks and visitor counts? Well, blogging no longer remains fun for them. It becomes a race. Race against own time schedules and enjoyment. This phase continues to dominate unless it wears you down and then you gradually see yourself weaning away from blogging.

However, this results in dwindling visitor count and downward spiral and less blog visitors. Behold, it no longer means anything to you. You have completely become inert to these things and you move away for a while, unless one fine day you casually visit your long forgotten blog once again -with no expectations and anticipations mind it – just casually to see the abyssmal bottom the stats has hit. It doesn’t matter to you really!

Causally once in a while you have thoughts and you feel the urge to pen it down. No compulsion to have a post per day, but a genuine urge to write and there you go back to your good ol’ friend – your long forgotten blog and you replenish it with some collation of words that it desperately needed for long. That is the moment to cherish. Writing free, not for the sake of posting it on your blog but for the sake of writing itself. That kind of feeling is rejuvenating and it really exploits the essence of blogging. Having passionate stuff that you really what to write and not just bland posting of some words.

This is what makes blogs of substance and this is what really hooks the reader. Loyal readers and appreciating readers. And you ought to be one of the readers, an appreciating one and it can never be unless you have gone through that weaning phase.

75K hits and going strong…

Its indeed a pleasure to see more than 75,000 hits on the stat tab of my blog. It is no mean count by any sort of imagination and it is this positive response that keeps me coming back to write on this blog in the midst of some very hectic schedules.

The blog till date has primarily been oriented to cater to self satiety.. including an array of topics ranging from real estate, technology, general opinions, photography and adventure. It has been revolving around my professional writing works and has been a reflection of it to some extent. The positive response on this blog also lets me know a sense of professional satisfaction that I gain from writing.

I would just like to thank all the readers – silent and vociferous, commentators and silent observers..
Keep visiting and helping this grow further..

A milestone in the journey!

Hello Everybody,

The stat figure now exceeds 50,000 count and that is really heartening for me. Keep coming back and looking out for more stuff on travel, technology, photography and more…

Thanks and Regards,
Rohan R. Rao

Mumbai Blogger Meet

Mumbai blogger meet

20/04/2008 at 16:00

Scheduled for 20/04/2008 at 16:00
City: Mumbai

Description
Indi-Bloggers reunite again, this time in Mumbai, on (Sunday) April 20th, 2008. We’re going to try and make this a huge hit, and draw in bloggers from all over the country! Indiblogger’s had some excellent press recently, so we want to capitalize on that to see where we should collectively take this. So spread the good word, invite your friends, and let’s make a LOUD NOISE!

Venue
To be announced, once discovered.