TAKING CHANCES WITH ENTRECARD

If someone told me less than four months ago that I would be a blogger, I would laugh it off.
You see, at that time, I didn't even know what a blog was all about.

But let me tell you this significant story from the start.

I work with the academe. I try my best to meet up with the ideals of the university where I am engaged in. It is a daunting and formidable task, because it requires one not only to have a mastery of the subject matter but also to be innovative enough to be able to incorporate the updates in science and technology - into one's didactic methodology.

It was for this reason that I wanted to conduct an experimental study on how I could effectively use solely - the world wide web resources in my particular subject.

One computer expert in the University advised me to open a main "site" of my own.

"How will I do that?" (I only know the basic rudiments of the computer) I could not help but ask him.

"Just surf in the internet, and you'll learn how." was the curt reply.

...So there I was, hunkered down on the computer, going over pages and pages of related literature.

Then I chanced upon this:

" Blogger create your blog now -- Free!"

I was curious what it was all about, so I clicked on it and followed the prompts.
I got excited when I learned that by making use of this "blog", I would be able to write about anything under the sun and be "published" in the internet. Incidentally, I forgot to mention earlier that I love writing. In fact, I would have ended up being a journalist if my parents didn't insist otherwise.

"There is no money in writing, " they said. Topic closed.

I didn't have the option but to be an obedient child.

Going back to the story - so that day, I created my very first blog.










I wrote my first post - it was entitled: " The Value of Honesty".
It was composed of only one paragraph. I was just curious of how it would work.

As soon as I saw the outcome, I was hooked. I started "blogging", and within the week, I created 5 blogs (imagine that!) - each with a topic of its own.

And yes, I was able to create 2 blogs for my subject.

After several days however, I realized that my blogs did not appear in any search engine.

I had presumed that they would, because they have been created for the internet. Sadly though, people came to me asking what the URLs were as they could not find them.

So I conducted another search and found this; "Add Your URL to Google". I got some pointers from google and painstakingly copied the meta tags, etc, to my blogs.

Would you believe me if I say that I had 15 tries before I was able to properly paste the verification code to my blogs' HTML?

I was ready to give up then!

This computer language was all Greek to me and I didn't know the "body tag" even if it was there in front of me.

But because of my desire to write, I persisted and learned painstakingly and slowly.

All my sites now had the verification codes in their HTML. BRAVO!

I had also started enlisting my blogs in Bloglists and other blog ranking sites.

To my dismay though, I still got little traffic.

I had a snippet of success - my blogs' names now appear with google search but not with any other search engine.

I wanted to be read just like any blogger. I wrote because I loved to.
But wouldn't it be wonderful to share these thoughts, ideas and facts with people around the globe - regardless of race, color or creed? I wanted to share with others my culture in this corner of the world, and learn from them too.

I had dreamed about this to happen one day.

Miracle of miracles, IT DID eventually!

And this is how it happened.




I was going over an interesting site which I had chanced upon the search engine when I noticed this small rectangular logo - ENTRECARD!
I clicked on it and it led me to another site. I discovered that the card was like an endless link to several blogs.




"Get one" the card said, so I registered and got one - more out of curiosity.

And that was the day, my real blogging days began.

I met writers who were excellent in their own genre of writing. The icing on the cake was that- my traffic and rank increased in leaps and bounds.

I could now type "The Clamor of Kalinga" in any search engine and it appears in one of the top searches, or even on top of all the search results.

I have discovered a new and exciting world.

There were varieties of blogs dealing with any topic that I could think of. Blogs that were simply amazing and incredibly informative.

I realized the fact, that to be able to maximize the benefits of entrecard. I will have to consider that entrecard is a community of people - of bloggers, and that in a community - respect for one another, understanding and cooperation - should be observed.

Presently, I try to reach the maximum drops per day, but I don't make it as my sole target. I usually stop and comment on articles I find worth reading and there are several noteworthy and information laden posts. It is much more rewarding to learn something new and interact with people all around the globe.

I took my chances with ENTRECARD and I had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

I laud ENTRECARD for continuously trying to improve their services. I am sure the blogging community recognizes your efforts.

Without you, blogging would never be a dynamic experience.

TO ENTRECARD , THANK YOU AND MORE POWER!