Achievement is something that’s always exciting given that it’s used to mean something positive. If someone comes around and asks me why on earth I spend so many hours in this blog, I may not be able to give a satisfactory answer. I just like doing it. However, there are more reasons why I write blogs and why I don’t think I can ever stop doing it. But that’s a topic for another post some other day. Today, I’ll talk about something related to the very existence of this blog.
I started blogging back in 2006. There’s a community blogging platform (that’s still most popular) in Bangladesh where I signed up. The idea of blogging was not pretty clear to me. I only knew typing bangla keyboard so I just went ahead and started posting my thoughts. Back then, very few people in Bangladesh knew what a blog was. But I started to feel really exciting as I continued writing and I started getting feedback from other bloggers around the country.
Two years later, I decided to start an English blog. It sounded an odd idea because starting an English blog in WordPress.com was not a great idea back then. Those community blogs provided a central stage or front page (just like the Freshly Pressed in WordPress.com). But all new posts used to go to the homepage bringing in more views to each individual posts. That’s the main reason why the community blogging has become extremely popular over the years and there are more than 10 super active bangla community blogs on the web.
However, blogging in WordPress.com was an odd idea because that way your blog would be like a ghost town. You have to manually market the address of your blog and ‘beg people’ to visit your site and leave comments. Again, they won’t most probably visit your blog every now and then. So, it was an established idea that you have to do ‘spread-the-word’ marketing after publishing each post.
I still chose to blog at WordPress.com with 50 megabytes of free storage (which now has been increased to 3 gigabytes!). My target of blogging in English language was to communicate and interact with larger audience. I write blogs mostly because I want to share my opinion and views on things as well as know what others think. I feel better writing in Bangla because that way I don’t feel any barrier. English is my second language and I haven’t taken any language learning courses yet so it’s always a little tougher for me to express myself in English. Still I chose to blog in English because I wanted to reach wider audience. Like you can guess, it’s an international language and the only way to achieve my target was to use English language in my blog.
I know this blog does not deliver anything extraordinary in particular. It’s been a few good years of ups-and-downs and reboots. I started blogging here in full force like a year ago (mostly after I bought the domain). And then my reader base began to rise slowly but steadily. As an added bonus, search engines have always been my friend because they pick up my blog (even the self-hosted ones) quickly.
How is the Target Achieved?
That’d be wrong, actually. The target hasn’t been achieved yet. I locked it in 2006 and now, after WordPress.com rolled out its new statistical feature, it’s visible that the target is being achieved. See the image above. It shows the countries where people visited my blog from.
United States is in the top of the list with Bangladesh on second of it. I think, my target of reaching wider audience with my English language is slowly being achieved. What do you think?
Check out your stats at WordPress.com homepage and let me know which country sends the highest number of visitors to your blog.
Its the UK for me with America second and Bangladesh third. Was that map taken from one day?! I’m impressed if it was!
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Bangladesh third? Cool, seems like despite blogging in English you got some readers here. 🙂
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Yeah, quite a few – some are bideshis of course, but most Bangladeshi 🙂 I would like more!
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Well, it’s hard to get Bangladeshi people read your blog while your primary language is English. But good luck, still. 🙂
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No! There are plenty out there writing blogs and even more who read and speak English – its a second language here! There’s almost no staff at LAMB that can’t read and speak English! 🙂
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Wow! That’s a different case, then. But I’m still not taking back my good wishes. 😛
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United States and then Sweden for me. Bangladesh comes fifth.
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United States top. Same as me. 😀
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I think it is for most people :?.
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Yup, like I said in a comment below. People from United States are really into reading blogs (probably in writing as well, when it comes to English language).
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Yeah maybe… but the United States has a bigger population than most countries, and thus more people who use the internet. It’s not only blogs… US more or less dominates all other platforms as well.
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I know. I’m not surprised to see US people driving most traffic. I’m surprised to see that these people — us — are not blogging from the US. (I tweeted this and received some responses and direct messages where fellow bloggers also said that they received more traffic from the US.)
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US followed by India..:)
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Looks like folks from the states are really into reading blogs. 😉
You are from India right? (Assuming from the picture of the couple in the bicycle!)
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Inspring article, especially for a newbie blogger like me. I planned to open a blog but the idea diminishes as soon as I think “Who is actually going to read my blog? And waste their valuable time”. By the way, planning to take a part time freelance blog writing job (in english). I too live in Bangladesh. Perhaps you can write a “how-to” article about becoming a freelance blog writer and get a job as soon as possible.
Sorry for posting a bit out of topic comment. Thanks 😀
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Ha ha, thanks! I guess you’ve already noticed that this here is just a personal blog and there is no income from here. Plus, I’m not really a freelance blog writer. Yes, I used to write blog posts for a blog and get paid, but that doesn’t make me a freelance blog writer (that’s a different niche).
I think the best thing is to keep writing, reading, improving your skills, knowing the grammars and finally looking for a job in marketplaces like oDesk.com. I’m not a blog writer because most freelance jobs related to blog writing seeks SEO article in almost any subject. But I couldn’t deliver articles on any subjects that I’m not very comfortable with or have no knowledge of.
For now, I think you should just keep a blog as a way of showcasing your writing skill.
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