The thing about blogging

September 16, 2008

During an interview i was asked this question.

“So whose blogs do you read besides yours?”

It caught me thinking for a while. Hmmm. Good question.

Reading blogs nowdays is depressing. I kid you not. During a period of time, the only blog i read is Cheeserland.com. Because it’s just so good. There are just way too many blogs that go like “How to monetize your blog” or “How to be a famous blogger” (ironically they are nowhere near famous or making a lot of money”), way too many Dawn-Yang lookalikes and way too many Kennysia soundalikes. There’s a fine line between entertaining and painful to read.

And there is competition (to stay on the top), i’m not going to deny (you really believe ah? People who tell you oh, nay, i don’t really care about my traffic count). There are so many popular bloggers nowadays some are (in)famous because they are annoying, some are popular because god-knows-why, and believe it or not most of the top female bloggers are, to put it diplomatically, not the best of friends. Else what is the reason you don’t see them hanging out camwhoring with each other?

I sometimes ponder what’s the shelf life of a blog. I can’t even fathom how Cheeserland would be like, say, 5 years down the road. Blogging is just like being in the entertainment industry. Sooner or later there are new waves (younger and hotter chicks) coming up and you just slowly fade off. So 5 years down the road i’ll either be labeled a veteran blogger, provided i’m still blogging (hmmm. i hope i get enough pension to travel around the world. Yea. dream on), or an obsolete blogger (oh, i think i’ve heard of her. She’s probably kind of famous like eons ago. But her blog’s like sooooo yesteryear. She still talks about nail art! HAHA!)

Oh my god.

Now i feel so intimidated.

Four years ago when i started blogging it was all pure fun. No backstabbing no blog politics. Some friends commented that i should really make some money out of my blog, one way or the other because they were so addicted to my eccentricity and outlandish cheesiness. Nowadays i can see there’s a theme to every other blog out there. Some kind of individual obsessions, with chocolate, strawberry, fish, meatball, sushi, egg… (omg, why all food ah?). Cheh. Makes me feel less special already. And some jokes i made 4 years ago became more cliched than ever.

Then came Nuffnang (i heart Nuffnang). And came the bloggerboom. Everyone is fighting for attention. Everyone complains about not making enough money–online. It’s so. annoying. Oh. No no, you got it wrong. I so totally advocate the idea of making money through blogging. And i’m prolly writing ads more than a lot of other people. Well, must practice what you preach right? But I just cannot tahan when people say i’m so commercialized. It happened about 1 year back. I even wrote a long ass entry about it but decided not to publish it.

Basically the gist is this (that time i was really angry so it was an angry post. yea.)

I don’t get it. How’s my blog commercialized?

Didn’t you realized it’s Cheeserland.COM (commercial) and not cheeserland.edu or cheeserland.imnotcommercialized?

So WHAT if my blog is a money-making shit website? If it’s so shitty why are you here leh? Who are you to make any complaints about my blog? First of all, i don’t blog for you. And please keep in mind that you don’t PAY to read my blog. Why is it that you don’t complain that most of the magazines out there consist of 50% advertisements? Why don’t you curse like mad when your favorite tv show gets a break and turn into commercials? Worst of all, you actually so willingly pay RM8 to buy a freaking magazines that have 50 pages of advertisements. So what exactly are you complaining about?

If you’d pay me to blog (each of you, say, RM1 per day, i’d have been a millionaire), fine, i’ll just shut up and suck up to your asses and write things that please your balls. Maybe even a little bit of cleavage here and there but hell, what am i blogging for? It’s not like when i use my commercial fees to enjoy foie gras you will get cancer and die in pain. (Yes the poor goose will die but why do you care? Don’t eat KFC la. Killing chicken not cruel meh?)

I’m going to sell stuff, put up ads—whatever i want, to make money and buy cheese to eat. Who doesn’t want money?

One scenario: Let’s say you have a huge piece of feta cheese (hmmm my fav) in your fridge. One day, you discover that it spits up a pile of gold whenever you sing a song to it. You sing 10 songs, it spits 10 piles of gold. Now, would you, or would you not, sing as many song as possible to it, or would you just eat it up and get fat?

Siao one.

Lemmi just simplify the question, since some people are so cow they refuse to understand the meaning of making money.

Question: You have a blog.You’re then given a choice.
1. You can make money out of your blog.
2. You cannot make money out of your blog.

Tell me, what would you choose?

Chee seen. Doesn’t matter. At the end of the day you still still come back and see how i make money. AND contribute to my daily hits.

Thank you.

(Ok that’s not the gist. I copied&pasted the whole thing.)

But that was a year ago. Now i’m getting it less and less, because why?

HA! Interesting.

Because?!?

EVERYFREAKINGONE IS DOING IT!

There, do you have a blog? Do you have a Nuffnang ad? Do you want to get an advertotial? Do you want to earn money?

There. That shut everyone’s bloody mouth up (i heart Nuffnang).

Oh. Blog politics. I don’t even want to go there. It gets me too edgy just talking about it.

There’s also this complication about a genuine review and an advertorial. Say you just blogged about how good McDonald’s is then KFC want you to do an advert for them, but found out that you actually gave Mc free advertising, so they refuse to pay you la. All they give you is a bucket of fried chicken maybe. A bit unfair for both the client and the blogger isn’t it.

I also don’t get why people say i’ve changed a lot (or have i?) and that i sound very angry nowadays (or do i?). All that has changed of me is my hair length and weight (quite drastically) and maybe a slightly improved grammar that’s all (or is that all?) I dunno but which blog doesn’t sound angry la. Last time i used to curse so much but i stopped doing that since a couple of years back because i wanted to keep my blog umum (that’s a lie. truth is because mom started reading my blog) and each time i pronounce something even remotely similar to profanity i will get reminded of 7-year-olds who read my blog. There, you all reprimand me but expect me to be myself ah? Fucckaccino. See, even blogging about this entry i have to think 4 times who it might potentially hurt, and delete accordingly.

Anyway what’s my point again? Nevermind. I lost track.

Oh ya. I was saying. Whose blog do i read daily? Not many, honestly. Starting to catch up since i started using Google Reader (need to know your competitor well hor). I read Kenny’s i read Ching’s, i read icanhascheezburger, i read ichigo’s (but she hardly ever updates), i read Mayzhee’s Cindy’s and Wendy’s (wtf i have a thing for pink blogs) every now and then. (Actually i don’t read Mayzhee one. It’s just to test how long would it take for her to comment here. Since she said she refresh Cheeserland every 5 minutes lo. We’ll see.) The rest are when i’m feeling emotionally stable (because reading blogs is depressing, don’t you think?) (ya ya ya, i know, i’m jealous ma, right, cuz they are more gorgeous and richer and more interesting than me i know thanks)

Oh. Today, i thought of an idea of making more money. Not sure if it works, but let’s try. You know, the reason why i don’t have a blog roll is because, if i start to put someone’s blog link there, another person will request one. Then another, another, and another. So in the end my blog roll become some toilet roll la! You have no idea how many requests i’ve turned down. They just shamelessly ask me to to promote them wor.

If you want me to link you, pay for it lo.

I’m setting up a Cheeseroll column–at the side bar, as you can see. I will accept only maximum five links, to make sure it doesn’t turn into a toilet roll! I also tidied up by sidebar so less junk now.

I think for a start i will give discount to the first 5 people! I will priced it at RM80. Next month i think i will raise the price. Fashion blogs, make up blogs, and all personal blogs are welcome to purchase a link.

Pleasecheeseme@gmail.com

By the way, those who are hoping for more gossip, sorry to burst your bubbles but, no more MDG drama. I kinda got into trouble because of that.

Thank you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 3:46 am and is filed under Senti-Emmental. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.