Afternoon Coffee Talk: Blogging Journey

Few days ago, I met up with a friend of mine in one of my favorite café. It was a sunny afternoon but the weather was rather chilly, a bit windy in fact. Being an introvert that I am, the first thing that came to mind was “Gosh, this is like the perfect weather to just wrap myself with a blanket in my room and watch a good TV series”. But no, that day was not one of those days where I regret going out. I am glad that I had the chance to meet him despite his stressful schedule. Long story short, we decided to order two cups of coffee and a plate of fries to accompany our conversation.

Hamur Dieng café in the afternoon

We talked about many things, but we are not about sharing all those teas here. The only topic I am going to highlight here is about his experience of blogging.  He had tried blogging twice in the past. It all started when he was in the 7th grade. He was required to create a blog post in his Technology and Information (IT) class. He used free domain provided by WordPress and he claimed that it was a whole new experience for him. As he found it exciting and fun, he continued to blog on his own and started producing content.

He mostly wrote about pop culture, paranormal experience/horror, and conspiracies. The interesting part is that he came up with titles such as “Top Ten Things You Must Know…”. I was a bit surprised and I straight up asked him whether he knew anything about "copywriting", considering that he came up with titles that follow the structure of the typical catchy hook for his post. You know, like titles that the typical preposterous news articles would use to stir controversy and tempt people to access? Yeah, I am sure you get what I mean.

Unfortunately, he didn't know a thing about copywriting or its purpose back then. He just started learning about journalism as he entered University and took Communication studies as his major. He basically just observed and imitated how the authors of the news articles and blog posts wrote their titles and reel in audience to read. I could say that he just jumped on the bandwagon.

"I think blogging as a career was not really a thing back then. I did it out of my own curiosity about the platform without considering the content-making process."

Throughout those years, he also tried using blogger once, but it didn't last long. He went back to WordPress as he felt that it provides a better user experience for him. He thought that the layout setting in blogger was more complicated than WordPress. After around three years of blogging, he stopped as he entered high school. The main reason was because someone hacked his blog and replaced all his contents, which is BARBARIC.

As he was majoring in software engineering in high school, he did create a new blog. However, it was for a completely different purpose. He did not produce any content and was only focused on designing the UI (User Interface)/UX (User Experience. To put it simply, he only used the blog as his "specimen" to practice web programming. He has not returned to the blogging world since then.

Time went by so fast with all those conversations. We did not realize it was already 9 p.m. The last thing I asked him before we part was that if he has the chance to retrieve his old blog, will he continue blogging? He said that he still has interest in blogging but not in retrieving his old blog. “I don’t want to cling on to the past”, he said. Instead, he wants to create a new one.  A clean slate to write a whole new types of content.

I have similar experience as him when it comes to blogging, except that I didn't stop blogging because my blog got hacked. I quit as I had no real purpose or consistency. To conclude everything, blogging is fun and exciting, but I believe that it has some phases that everyone must go through. While some managed to get to the final phase where they can consistently produce and monetize their contents, some only get stuck in the earlier phase and never find their way out.