Blogging has helped me in writing better: V. Divya Sai

V. Divya Sai is a Scientist and Biotechnologist with a keen interest in Blogging. This 21 year old blogger from New Delhi, India has founded the blogs Bikers Blog and Blogger Widgets & Help (and recently started - Free Blogger Templates), with the main aim of helping other bloggers to uplift and optimize their blogs. BloggerStop.Net is mainly beneficial for people who blog on Google’s Blogger platform.

Interview

Q: Welcome to Speakbindas. Tell us since when blogging has been a part of your life? Was there any motive or inspiration as a backbone of it?

• Ans.: Back in 2007, it all started with a small free website (sai-510.page.tl). With hardly 40 or so pages, the website received more than 500,000 visitors within a year. And this traffic inspired me to start a professional blog, and finally on 23^rd, September 2008 that inspiration turned out in to a new blog - BloggerStop.net

Q: What is your blog all about? Which topics you cover there? Is that you alone running/maintaining the blog, or have a team?

• Ans.: Being my first professional blog, to keep the platform simple I selected Blogger over WordPress. Blogger gives you unlimited space, bandwidth and also allows you to completely customize your blogs template. But it has some limitations too; some must-have widgets/tools for blogs are missing from its default ready-to-add list of gadgets. And this is exactly where BloggerStop help other bloggers. At BloggerStop I publish tutorials and hacks through which one can get almost all the features/plug-ins that are present in any WordPress based blog (many of the published widgets aren’t even available for WP users). Other than blogger widgets you will also find many SEO tricks and other general blog optimization tips in the blog.

Q.: How important is it for the blogger to interact with their readers? Do you respond to all the comments that you receive?

• Ans.: After Blogging for a while, I have noticed that readers feel very happy to receive instant replies to their queries. But importance of responding to readers actually depends on the niche of your blog. For example, if yours is a photography blog and most of the comments are to admire your work, then responding to all of them with a “thank you“/ “pleasure to have you here” is not necessary. But if you have an informative blog, wherein many queries are asked by readers, then responding to each of them is really necessary to keep your readers happy and turning them in to your regular readers or subscribers.

Q: What are the present statistics for your blog, i.e. number of daily visitors, visitors geographical status etc.?

• Ans.: I am really glad to answer this question, as within a year my blog has received readers from all the 192 member countries of United Nations. In fact it has received visitors from 195 countries (based on the statistics from ClustrMaps.com and Google-Analytics). According to the present statistics BloggerStop receives 50-60% traffic from United States, 15-20% from India, UK, Canada and Pakistan (combined) and 5-10% from Malaysia & Indonesia (combined).

Q: Is blogging for you just a passion or a medium for earning too? Does it help you to earn enough cash to quit a 9 to 5 day job?

• Ans.: Being a student, I cannot compare Blogging with a 9 to 5 job. But it certainly earns more than my monthly pocket money.

Q: Who are your favorite bloggers, whom you read frequently?

• Ans.: Most of my bookmarked blog posts are from CopyBlogger.com and Labnol.org. Other than this I usually read SEO, web-designers and technical/gadgets related blogs.

Q: From the secret bucket of your blogging experiences, what tips you would like to share with the fellow bloggers?

• Ans.: Well just make sure that your blog can make your readers happy: If you really care for the traffic from search engines, then let me tell you that search engines mainly focus on making web-surfers happy, so your SEO should simply focus on how to make your readers happy.
• And if your blog attracts more traffic from social networking sites, then your blog-design and content must match this type of traffic, as this traffic usually moves quickly from one blog to another, and you must have a really attractive design + content to convert this traffic into subscribers.

Q: Do you believe that blogging completes you? If yes, tell us how?

• Ans.: Well if not in the real life, blogging is definitely an important part of my online life. More than 80% of my online surfing is always related to my blogging work.

Q: What was the happiest and gloomiest moment of your life?

• Ans.: This question is not easy to answer, as there’s no meter to measure our moments.

Q: Say, you are sponsored to travel to 3 world destinations, where you need not to worry about costs for food, hotel or anything. Which destinations would you pick up, and why? Would you like to take someone along with you? If yes, whom?

• Ans.: Wow the entire Earth is so beautiful that I would love to visit the entire world and certainly not in just 80 days. But just to answer this specific question, I would love to visit Paris and Las Vegas and Venice.

Q: Are you into watching movies? If yes, which fills your list of favorite ones?

• Ans.: Well not really in to movies, but of course I have a few in my fav-list: Titanic, Harry Potter and some patriotic Bollywood movies.

Q: How has blogging helped you other than money?

• Ans.: Well it has helped me writing better, knowing the people around the world and also taught me how to interact with people either professionally or formally. And I am still learning a lot of new things daily.

Q: What would be the one thing you’d change about yourself?

• Ans.: It’s difficult to change when you are already perfect!

Q: What is your deepest fear?

• Ans.: Nothing…

Q: If you could meet one person, dead or alive, who would it be?

• Ans.: Hmm I don’t believe in God, so I would like to him as a person to start believing in him.

Q: Which is your favorite television show? Favorite songs?

• Ans.: Well better than soaps, I prefer reality shows of AXN, programs on Discovery/Nat GEO, and some old cartoons like Dexters Lab, Ducktales etc.

Q: How much money do you have in your purse/wallet right now (including change)?

• Ans.: I think around 1100 INR. Actually out of that 1100, I have to return 500 bucks to my dad and 500 are for any emergency like a traffic fine…lol !

Q: What is your favorite food? Any particular dislikes?

• Ans.: All sweets and other unhealthy fast foods are my favorite, but some healthy fruits are also included in this list. I hate most of the Chinese dishes especially Momos/dim sums.

Q: What’s your take on the technological advancement these days? Does it make people’s life simple or complicated?

• Ans.: Presently it is making life simpler, but soon it will be much more complicated than Stone Age days.

Q: What do you think of “blogging is the next BIG thing”?

• Ans.: It is ALREADY the BIG thing spread all over the Internet. And that is why I think this interview is being conducted, isn’t it?

Q: Any special message you would like to share with your blog readers as well with everyone else?

• Ans.: If you are a blogger, then you are at the right place and reading the right stuff to make your blogging experience better. Best Regards & Happy New Year !

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Note: Above photo is fakely created through MagMyPic.com

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