Dear everyone-who-emails-me-on-blog-related-matters,

The single greatest benefit of blogging for close to eight years (whew) will undoubtedly remain the friendships I have made through RTDM. In many of these cases, these friendships have been initiated by an email. In addition, I have, over the years received, through email, many life-enhancing and horizon-expanding links (mostly to Youtube videos) and also thoughtful retorts to my blog posts, typically from those concerned that critical comments in the public space might be deemed combative. And of course the type of communication everyone likes— pats on the back.

Because appreciation remains, as always, the biggest incentive to write on a forum where I make no money.

To all the above senders of email, a sincere thank you. Please do keep writing.

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Pliss try to attend. And bring friends. More the heppier.

Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind won the Indiblog of the Year and the Most Humorous IndiBlog at the Indibloggies [polling statistics here] setting off mass hysteria in the country.

According to news agency Reumors, Kolkata went on a general twenty-four hour bandh, Mamata Banerjee asked for the resignation of the chief minister, Katrina Kaif signed another three movies, three more political parties demanded separate states, two more Bhojpuriyas were beaten up in Mumbai and Zardari got  three billion more dollars in “non-military” aid.

Yes mass hysteria. Of the mundane kind seen everyday.

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The last thing one should do to an old man on a bench is to encourage him to dispense unsolicited advice. No sooner than you do so than out comes more and more words of dubious wisdom.

In the last post, I dispensed some very general advice about the art of blogging. In this post, I get a bit more specific, focusing on what I feel is the best way to build traffic for your blog.

For those of you who believe that they blog for their own satisfaction and do not care if anybody else reads it then please skip the rest of the post. But for those of us who desire an audience but struggle to get one (as I did once upon a time and the frustrations of which I detailed previously), here are some general thoughts on the topic.

The most important thing of course remains the same. Good content. Last time I said “If you build it, they will come”. Sure. But if the water runs out and the toilet stinks, then they won’t stick around. Trust me on that.

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This is my 600th post (according to my WordPress dashboard). Also this month on 20th August this blog will turn five. In the accelerated world of the Net, that’s considered to be an eternity. Actually I would say that’s quite a lot of time  in the real world also , enough for instance to have completed another PhD.

Which is why today I put on the cap of  cranky old man and fortified by five-years and six hundred posts of wisdom, dispense five totally unsolicited bits of advice for bloggers.

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