One of the best things about blogging in the early days is the friends one would make. It was great to meet new friends and build a community around the blog and friends’ blogs.
I met fellow Kiwi and reader, Andrew, few years ago when he visited Malaysia. He even attended one of our bloggers meet up sessions.
Years passed, Andrew sent me a message few weeks ago. Andrew is now a university lecturer in New Zealand (I think!).
He told me that I became his source of inspiration for an examination question. Andrew had my experience had a blogger in a form of an examination question!
Daniel is a student studying politics and law at Victoria University. In his first year of study (2010) he started a “blog” on the internet writing weekly articles on political events in New Zealand posting them to his own web site.
After 12 months of blogging with little readership, attention was suddenly drawn to his web site when it was mentioned in a popular newspaper column. As a result the number of readers started to rise significantly. He then decided to set up a Facebook page to attract more attention to his blog. Soon he had over 3,000 followers on Facebook.
The costs of hosting his web site really started to increase during the second year so at the beginning of this third year (February 2012) he thought he should arrange some advertising on his web site to defray costs. He found a company called Nuffnang which arranges advertising for blogger’s web sites and pays commissions if the number of hits to a web page exceeded a specified number each month. Daniel engaged Nuffnang to place advertising on his web site.
In December 2012 Daniel received a cheque from Nuffnang for $7,000. This met the costs of hosting his webpage ($1,000) that year and gave him some spare money for his fourth year at university. He was looking forward to a bigger cheque from Nuffnang in December 2013 as his blog attracted yet more readers.
[Examination questions redacted]
One of the things that I’ve never thought I could achieve is that I will become a source of inspiration for an examination question.
Achievement unlocked!