10 Years of Blogging and Counting

I started JavaPapers in the year of 2008. Doing a thing for many years and keeping it live was funtastic!

Time has passed, so many things have changed in technology and also in my life. Back then there was feeds, now its social media. Things kept on changing consistently. Now blogging has become an industry by itself.

When I started blogging, WordPress was just around the corner, but now it rules the blog world. You can build a business depending on WordPress alone, many are doing it.

There was no such thing as viral, but now you have to make it viral otherwise you will not get noticed in this noisy social media world. In those days, all you need to do is just write and publish. Now, you need to focus on numeric things like SEO, social media campaign, video version, subscriptions and so on.

In the personal front, lot has happened in the past 10 years. An important thing was, I have found my own technology company and running it successfully for the past five years. Yes my blog helped it to an extent. 

What I gained

• Contacts. Contacts. Contacts. Its important and in particular, when you are doing a business, it is everything.
• Blogging has helped me to stay in touch with the technological trends. 
• Improved my communication and helped me to convey ideas in a better way.

Sharing my experience

• If you wish to start a blog, now is the time to do. Do not procrastinate. Jump now, and you can always adjust the course during the sail.
• Be ready for change. Things will change regularly and do not allow your policies to dictate your rigidness. Be adaptable and willing to change.
• Write for your readers. Keep listening.
• There are different ways to monetize a blog and there is no common blueprint available. I tried ads for a shorter period and it didn’t work for me, but works for many. My suggestion is, create your own product and plan for income via that.
• SEO is not a grey area. It is good to learn about that.
• Social media is everything. If you want your blog to become famous, you need to learn about social media marketing.
• It will take time to reap the benefits and you need to patiently wait. Blogging is a marathon race.
• Be consistent in your publishing schedule.
• Above all, content and quality content is the king.

Little history

This is how the first version of JavaPapers looked. I have changed the design more frequently than you can imagine in the past 10 years. Design and learning are a never ending process. Look at this first version and see how primitive it is. That’s why I am asking you not to delay your launch.

Road map

• Recently I started writing more on Android as I found it to be interesting. Need to get back and write more on Java.
• I should launch a fully packed video tutorial course for Java. Why not?