My mummy's guide to blogging

Many people think that to maintain a blog is to just write our inner most carnal desires periodically and post them online. But what they do not know is that the world of bloggers is ridden with secrets and sabotage. In this post I will let you know some of the secrets. In a few days from now, you will automatically get to know about the sabotage as the blogger brethren bury me alive in a maggot filled coffin for letting out what was guarded with great devotion.

Symbiosis. You advertise me, I advertise you. Bloggers are a symbiotic group. If a fellow blogger sticks a link to your blog in his blog, you have to return the favour. I know a lot of you may be angry with me for not having your blog links on my page when you have mine. I would love to have all the names of the blogs I read. It is just that I read one too many blogs and some that are private and closed for public viewship. Since I am honest and impartial, I would like to have all the blog names posted and I don't think the owners of the private blogs are not going to be very happy about it. If you are also one of those who likes to read other people's private stuff, I tell you, it is not very easy to begin with. You should have read every page in the internet until you come across this before you know where each one's secret secrets are hidden.

lol-ing. One of the secrets of increasing your viewship is to go to random blogs and write arbitrary comments. They will visit your blogs to see who you are and thereby increasing your visitor count. You can comment whatever you want, even say the most indecent of obscenities as long as you end it with a smilie or a lol. People are just happy as long as they have comments for their posts.

Rule of 40-60. When the visitor counter reads 10,000, be assured that 4,000 of these visits were from the blogger him/herself. Usually 80% of the visits are from him or her for the first one year; by this time he or she would have given up on writing. In the second year, viewership percentage from other people will increase but eventually settle down at the 40-60 ratio.

Idea hours. Ideas to blogs usually arise when you are in one-to-one meetings with senior managers. As you pretend to actively listen to them, you will painfully see your ideas eroding out of your brain. The interesting ones arise when you are in the toilet on days when you think your last night's spicy biryani is out for one min and not entirely so in the next.

That brings to an end the first set of lessons to blogging. The next set will be released as soon as I manage to nick enough ideas from other unpublicised bloggers. That's another lesson. Steal from others. As long as you can publicise your posts more than the other guy you can always claim it to be your idea. You never know, it may not be his as well!