Bloggers’ park

Sharmila Chand

“I am a blogger”, is the statement that one hears often these days from the young and ‘not so young’ alike. Blogging seems to be the figuring high on the list of popular new-age professions. There are stories of people who have quit high-profile jobs to engage themselves full-time in blogging. They are called ‘professional bloggers’. They shoulder the responsibility of earning through their blogs. Is it an appealing fantasy? Here’s what some successful bloggers have to say about 'blogging as a full time career.

Jaspal Singh: Jaipur

This mechanical engineer from Jaipur had ‘a thing’ for IT which steered him to blogging. He started blogging in late 2009 with his blog SaveDelete.com It is about technology, internet tips and web design resources. A workalcholic, Jaspal likes to spend more time on the internet than roaming around the city.

Success story: “When I was in college one of my friends told me about earning from a website through ads. I researched on this and that led to my first blog. I only had an idea then, but I believed in hard work and slowly I convinced my parents to allow me to continue in this profession. My parents supported me completely and here I am today earning few lakhs a month.

Challenges: Competition was the major challenge that Jaspal had to face. “I used all kind of methods and experimented a lot to get my blog on the top of search results. Due to those experiments I learnt about mistakes that I made and mistakes of other favourite bloggers. However, once I started getting the traffic, it was easy to continue and make this a full-time affair”.

How much can one earn: “There are so many things now that you can do with blogging. Earning through ads and affiliate marketing are the two top most ways to earn from your blog. You can earn a handsome amount every month”.

A word of advice: This field is not as easy as it sounds and requires long hours of “virtual” slogging. It is best to avoid setting up an “office” at home.

Bhumika Thakkar: Mumbai

A qualified Chartered Accountant, Bhumika started her blog in September 2010, five years ago. She was working full time as a professor but has now been blogging full time for more than a year and a half. Her blog ‘New Love — Makeup’ is about beauty, makeup, fashion and lifestyle, basically things she likes.

Success story: “I started my blog as a hobby and had no idea that it will be a full-time ‘job’ for me. Consistency is the key to blogging, I blog every single day or max alternate days. I don’t keep a longer break and there hasn’t been any in the past five years. Even when I was getting married and was out for my honeymoon, I had scheduled my blog posts. So dedication and consistency is what has brought me till here”.

Challenges: “Finance is the first challenge as in India blogging is still growing and it is very difficult to convince brands as to why they should spend on bloggers.

They don’t understand the benefits and many believe that advertisements in magazines, etc would benefit them more. Not realising that the world is going online and if you have to search something on Google, the results they get for a particular product would be a blogger’s honest review on the product, unlike the magazines which people have to go and buy.

Apart from finance, handling the PRs and getting your invoices cleared, which takes months and months, is another issue. But one has to deal with them with patience”.

How much can one earn: “Do not expect blogging to pay all your bills in the beginning. Give it some time, put in efforts, slowly but surely you will reach where you want to”.

A word of advice: “Be consistent. I have seen many start a blog and then not posting because they don’t have the time, patience, etc. It involves ‘hard work’ like any other job”.

Kartik Raichura: Mumbai

Kartik Raichura is the Founder of BMS.co.in which is a popular ‘Bachelor’s of Management Students Blog’ with a mission “of the BMSites, for the BMSites and by the BMSites”. He did his MBA in Marketing from WeSchool and his Bachelor’s in Management from Mithibai College in Mumbai. He started ManagementParadise.com in 2004 at the age of 19. This start-up has not only been acknowledged as one of the top 100 start-ups to work for by SutraHR, but also got him the "Star Young Entrepreneur Award" in 2013 by Indira International Innovation summit.

The success story: Kartik started BMS.co.in in 2010 with a few blog posts that gave information about admission cutoffs at various colleges, festivals that the first year students in BMS should lookout for, some study guides prepping them for their board exams and the response was phenomenal. A small group of BMS passouts gathered together and created a new vibrant blog for students pursuing the BMS course in Mumbai. Now it covers content on BMS Academics like exam-related queries, best reference books, college festivals, industrial visits, Life @BMS, careers like what to do in BMS and what not to, youth blogs etc. Last year his blog got over 8 million page views from 230 countries. He has recently been working on a fairly new venture — Blogging.co.in where the vision is to create 10,000 bloggers and train them make $100 everyday over the next five years.

Challenges: To start a blog is easy but to maintain it as it grows becomes a major challenge. Being a business graduate and having no technical expertise was a major challenge for him as it is for most bloggers. “Technology is changing at a very fast pace and we have to keep up with the new set of features our audience demands. Many a times our servers crash due to a huge flood of students coming to us for their last-minute preparations. There has been times when the students are frustrated because our blog has crashed and they are unable to access information when they most need it”.

How much can one earn: Over a crore a year or possibly a lot more than that depending on the blogger’s area of expertise. Mashable is a blog focused on social media, TechCrunch is a blog focused on technology and both are worth millions of dollars today. There are several such blogs and all these started out to be as simply as any other blog.

A word of advice: Write about the things you are passionate about. Write to help people looking for an answer online. Start and do not stop if you do not get gratified immediately. Get a good mentor, he can save you years of learning yourself into hours and help you succeed faster.

Sandeep Jain: Noida

Born and brought up in Firozabad, Sandeep Jain got BTech degree from UP Technical University followed by MTech from IIT Roorkee. After graduation, he joined DE Shaw and Co., in Hyderabad as a Software Developer. It was here that he conceived the idea of GeeksforGeeks and started working on it with one of his friends. He left his job after two and a half years to venture into full-time blogging in 2009.

Success story: GeeksforGeeks is a computer science portal meant to help computer enthusiasts to learn and contribute their experiences so that others may also learn. The platform has a huge user base (more than 1 million facebook followers) who solve problems, discuss new approaches and share amongst each other. The portal has been created to provide well written, well thought and well explained solutions for programming problems.

“We also give opportunity to young bloggers to showcase their technical blogging talent. Selected blogs are published at our home page and Facebook page”.

Challenges: “Creating a website was one of the initial hurdles we had because it was not that easy six years back. Hosting , creating, securing a blog are much simpler and easier now. Thanks to blogspot which came to our rescue as we took baby steps towards creating our blog.

Being a newbie in any field may make one face loads of new problems. My website had its first hack attack just after 5-6 months and server was down many a times thereafter due to malicious attacks. But as they say, without hard work, nothing grows but weeds. I kept working harder and harder to figure out the reasons for all these problems.

“Another challenge was to leave highly paid prestigious job at a dream company like DE Shaw. Leaving a well paid job at the same time, was very difficult to convince family and friends, that too in an Indian middle class environment”.

How much can one earn: “Money should never be the driving force for bloggers. It should be about what one likes and is passionate about. There is no limit on earning though. One can start with a blog and a popular blog always has potential to convert into a big business. Indians, I must say are doing really good in blogging business”.

A word of advice

Don’t rush for earnings at the initial stages.

Write about what you enjoy and not what you think may give you more money.

Try to generate the best content in your area of expertise.

Don’t forget to respond to your readers, after all your existence is because of them only.

Smita Diwan: Mumbai

Smita is a television journalist and communication specialist with an experience of 10 years in media and leading satellite channels. She has worked with prominent news channels such as CNBC Awaaz and Zoom. She has done her Master’s in Journalism from the Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication, Pune. While working in the media industry as a Senior Correspondent and an Anchor she realised the need for a dedicated portal to focus on what women want. Her Whatshelikes.in is India’s first women portal started by women and run by women and completely dedicated to contemporary women in India. WSL gives an opportunity to women across the world to come together and share their views/reviews/ voice their opinion on products, services & women related issues.

Success story

“Whatshelikes was started in 2014 and since then we have received great response from women readers across the globe. We’re a contributor-based model — a majority of our stories come in through our community of writers-and our goal long-term is to be a site that’s for women, by women and feels really relevant to their lives”.

How much can one earn

“ That depends on the potential, the kind of team you have, You can make as much as you want”.

A word of advice

Be yourself. Only write about what makes you believe in it. Have people you trust read your work and be open to their criticism.