We have all had times during our blogging career when something unexpected happens. You can’t really say whether it was funny, crazy or inspirational. Today, I had been wondering all day as to what to write and finally I had decided not to write anything ( remember, when you have nothing to say, it’s best to say, well, nothing ) until I got an email from a person asking me if I was hiring.

Ok, let me clear something first. I don’t own a company or a business, I am not in any position to hire or fire anybody where I work and this email came out of nowhere, asking me if I was interested in hiring him at Work N Play. My first thought as you can imagine was ” Wow, this is crazy ” which later shifted to a laughter and I called it ” Man, that was funny “. After thinking about this email for a while my whole perception changed as to what to think of it. [Read more →]

Tags: Ramblings by Ritu - 7 Comments »

The 10 commandments - we have all heard of it, most of us have read it and hopefully all of us try to incorporate it into our lives as well. As I was reading the 10 commandements, I thought there should be commandments for blogging as well. I could relate some of the 10 commandments directly to blogging.

There needs to be rules, expectations and do’s and dont’s in everything we do and blogging is no exception. The 10 commandments of life guides us to lead life as a better human being and hopefully my 10 commandments of blogging will guide me ( and you if you find it useful ) to become a better blogger.

The Ten Commandments Of Blogging

1. Thou Shalt Not Steal

If you want to grow as a blogger and make a name for yourself in the field of blogging, this is a big NO! A lot of times we find bloggers longing for good content and they can’t seem to write one. It’s ok. Go ahead write what you can and slowly you will find your content and writing maturing along with your blog. Do not copy and paste other popular articles, if you are using a post from somebody else as a reference, give them the credit that is due. This is one of the most important thing starting out a blog, do not cheat the system and your readers because you will be cheating yourself. [Read more →]

Tags: Blogging, Ramblings by Ritu - 28 Comments »

It’s pretty exciting as this marks the 100th post on Work n Play since it started in August 2007. This blog has grown in terms of traffic, hopefully quality and been through many changes and I myself think I am growing as a blogger. I thought of sending out a thank you that is long overdue and what better way to utilize the 100th post. I look at this as a milestone for a new blog and would like to thank one person who has helped me tremendously. [Read more →]

Tags: Blogging, Links, Ramblings, Reviews by Ritu - 14 Comments »

One of the most effective ways to learn is from your mistakes. This holds true for your blog as well, as we are constantly trying to gain popularity for our blogs in the blogosphere. Since the launch of this blog in August I myself have made quite a few mistakes which when I look back, at times are embarassing. But this is how we learn, from our mistakes.

The first mistake that I encountered was not researching enough on what platform I wanted my blog on. I started this blog on Blogger which is one of the easiest way to start a blog. But again Bloggers’ limited functionality will hurt your blog if you plan to expand it further and are as serious with your blog as I am. If you start on one platform and later decide to change it, one thing that you are going to see hurting your blog is ” you will lose your readers “. While I was switching my blog to Wordpress from Blogger and getting the layout ready I stopped updating for more than a week, the result, I lost almost 30 RSS readers that had subscribed to my feeds.

Also as we value PageRank so much in determining the value and quality of a blog, you can be hit by this as well while you make a switch. If your blog had a PageRank in Blogger and then you decide to switch over to other platform, you are going to lose this recognition to your blog which might hurt your reputation ( not that I care much for PageRank ).

Another thing that time after time I try to mention is please do not spam the comment section on other blogs. Again its a trial and error, you do wrong and next time you find out how to do it right. Once you spam a comment section on a popular blog you will be seen as a spammer by the blogger and all other commenters as well. Think of it this way, if one of the popular blog has a post that has 90 comments and you go in there and spam the comments section, you are now seen as a spammer by the blogger and all 90 commenters as well. You just lost 91 people that could have visited your blog. [Read more →]

Tags: Blogging, Ramblings by Ritu - 5 Comments »

Its been a couple days since google updated the Pagerank and as we all know there has been quite a few stir up on the internet community. Every blog you read and every forum you visit you will find something being talked about the Google’s recent pagerank update ( including this blog ). I just think its about time we leave google alone and get back to what we all do, write and provide good content for our readers and viewers.

No, this post doesn’t contrradict with what I wrote about the pagerank on my previous post, all I am saying is we need to stop bitching at some point in time and now seems about a good time ( its a little past due to be honest ). Google is google, a search engine giant and the provider of many services that we use for free. We all have opinions, that is what makes us an individual different from others. So certainly we all have our own thoughts and opinion on Google as well but do we have to bash it out every other day? I don’t think so. [Read more →]

Tags: Google, Ramblings by Ritu - 5 Comments »

We all know how hard it is to get traffic when you first start a blog or any website.There are some things most of us fail to realize while we wait for that suddent rush of traffic - it takes time! Work N Play is my third blog and my 2 other blogs have been dead for almost a year ( R.I.P ), the sad part is those two blogs didn’t last even 2 months before I burned them to death. Why? I wasn’t getting enough traffic, was it a good enough reason to let those two babies die so early? I dont think so.

All the blogs that we regularly visit weren’t as popular as they are now at some point in time, they had to work and wait patiently for that to happen. Everything takes time, growing from a toddler to adulthood, growing from a seed to a plant and it is no different when it comes to blog or any other site for that matter. [Read more →]

Tags: Blogging, Ramblings by Ritu - 11 Comments »