I have been planning / wishing / dreaming to publish a collection of my blogposts on the Bangsa Moro. Tentative title is Blogging the Bangsa Moro.
I started developing my own websites in 1996, before blogging was invented or became popular. i wrote just about everything but mostly about the Bangsa Moro (Moro Nation). I just used free webhosts like virtualave., geocities, 0moola, freehostia etc. I started around mid-90s. I did not see any other website about or by Moros during that time. To my surprise, I received quite a number of emails congratulating me on my websites and wishing me the best. These emails came from abroad, and mostly from Christian Filipinos. These emails were the ones that inspired me to maintain and build other websites.
When I started in 1999 writing professionally for a newspaper, The Philippine Post, I uploaded my articles to my websites. I got even more positive response. One Fil-Am group asked permission to publish one of my articles, the Charge of the Wood Brigade, in their website.
I was a late-comer to blogging. At first, I thought it was just an online diary. I could just write one article at a time. And the old entries would not be read anymore. There was nothing in a blog that I could not do with my websites.
It was only in 2005 that I started blogging, with Blogger or blogpost.com. Later, in January 2006, I used blogsome.com, a bloghost owned by an Irish company. I liked Blogsome because it allowed the users to do anything with the templates, like putting apps, graphics, videos, etc. I was practically creating my own widgets. Later, I also used wordpress blogs.
I found out that somehow, the blogs are easily found by search engines, easier and faster than with websites. Perhaps it was because it was being “renewed” with every fresh entry. Every new entry seems to attract the search engines and ad platform networks. On the other hand, adding new entry to websites doesn’t seem to register with the search engines. The various search engines and advertising networks like Technorati are crawling the web and ranking the sites using some criteria. Blogs receive much higher rankings than websites.
And so by 2007, I concentrated more on my blogs than on my websites. I used the tricks of the trade (now called SEO) to get good rankings in Google Rank and Technorati and others.
In the 3rd iBlog summit, two of my blogs were nominated. To my surprise, the nominees for the Best Blog wrote in their blogs that my blog, Reflections on the Bangsa Moro, was their go-to blog when it comes to information on Moro issues. And when I attended the summit, I met one of the judges who told me that she thought that I should have won. That really made my day.
I thought I could monetize my blogs through Google’s Adsense. In the iBlog summit, a speaker talked about getting a lot of money with Google Adsense. The other participants told me they got a lot of money with the pay-per-click. But with the thousands of people visiting my blogS, I got only a couple of dollars worth! So, I removed the Adsense widget. (At that time, Google admitted anyone in their Adsense business, no pre-qualification).
Today, I maintain about 3 or 4 blogs plus some mirror blogs. I don’t use any SEO tricks as I couldn’t care less about Google rankings or Google Adsense. I share my blogposts through my Facebook and twitter and sometimes, Google+ and Linkedin accounts.
ANTHOLOGY OF BLOGPOSTS
The book that I hope to publish (Blogging the Bangsa Moro) is a collection of blogposts from my various blogs – the Refections on the Bangsa Moro (jamalashley.blogsome.com), The Setting Sun (jamalashley.wordpress.com), The Bangsa Moro Blog (bangsamoro.wordpress.com), The Bangsa Moro (bangsamoro.blog.com), The Moro Observer (datujamal.blogspot.com) and Postprandial Musings (jamalashley.blog.com) and Postprandial Musings, 2.0 (jamalashley.com).
BLOG CONVERSATION
The comments section creates a good discussion / conversation among the readers and the blog author. This was before Facebook changed everything in Social Media.
Today, very few people give their comments in blogs anymore. If they think they need to comment, they just share the blogpost on FB and write their comments on their FB wall. Thus, the conversation moves to the FB wall which usually does not include the blog author.
The comments section of many of my posts contain very interesting discussion, which give a wider information and understanding of the topic.
Below, I included excerpts from some of my blogposts and some comments by readers. The excerpts from my brother’s essay in the Ateneo Law Journal is not included in the book although I have blogged about it.
[IF YOU THINK THIS IS A GOOD MATERIAL FOR A BOOK, YOU MIGHT WANT TO DONATE. JUST CLICK PAYPAL IN THE SIDE BAR. IF I CAN HAVE IT PUBLISHED, I’LL SEND YOU A SIGNED COPY. THANKS. 🙂 ]
(Click the image and click it AGAIN to enlarge it to full size.)
Postprandial Musings, 2.0 