An estimated 35% of Indian Internet population express themselves through blogs. Indians also blog the most in the Asia-Pacific region – more than five times a week.
Even the Indian corporate world is warming up to the blogging phenomenon. Bajaj Auto and TVS Motors are scouring blogs to get feedback on their bikes and improve their product. Several Indian companies are using blogs for buzz marketing and corporate communications. Reliance went a step further and sought Kiruba’s suggestions on how to generate a buzz in the blogosphere for their product. WATBlog announces the launch of WATConsult – a consulting company to guide companies on how to leverage the blogosphere community.
These are all great signs of the fact that the Indian blogosphere is evolving and going mainstream.
That leaves me wondering though – why are there only a handful of professional Indian bloggers ?
The most prominent Indian professional bloggers that come to mind are Om Malik (no intro needed) and Amit Agarwal – author of Digital Inspirations. Team iLeher recently did a QnA session with him, which you can check out on their website.
In my opinion, there are several reasons hampering Indian bloggers going pro:
1) Majority of the Indian blogs are opinion or popular culture blogs as opposed to thematic blogs. If you intend to go pro, you need to focus on a niche and then build a loyal, passionate fan base around the niche. Take any of the full time US bloggers as an example – TC focuses on Web2.0 startups, Engadget focuses on tech gadgets, PopSugar focuses on celebrity gossip etc.
2) Blogging is still relatively in its infancy in India. I know several of you may contest this, but the stress is on ‘relatively’. Email, Portals, news, job sites, online matrimony are still the objects of fancy of the casual Indian Internet surfer. Blogging is still not seen as mainstream by the casual Internet surfer.
3) Broadband penetration in India can also be attributed as one of the factors. To turn pro, you need to build a loyal, passionate audience for your blog. It would be hard to accomplish the above unless access to the Internet is pervasive and dead easy.
4) Lack of options for revenue generation for Indian bloggers. Google Adsense is currently the most preferred option for revenue generation. No matter how remarkable Google’s Ad network may be, I dont think it is suited for Indian bloggers / audience.
Update: On the lines of revenue generation, is it a good idea for a blogger to include summary of the posts as part of the RSS feeds or the full posts as part of the RSS feeds ?
However, as I mentioned earlier, the landscape is changing and evolving fast. I think its just a matter of time before the Indian version of Engadget, PopSugar and other thematic blogs emerge.
What is your take about professional blogging in India and its future ? If you are a wannabe professional Indian blogger, drop in a comment about your blog and let us know of your plans ahead.
Not nuclear science. I think the big barriers are 1) To have the vision to see the blog as a possible alternative source of news or opinion. 2) The knowledge required to be able to post regularly 3) The discipline required to post regularly 4) Establishment of the credibility — which only comes with time 5) Resisting the temptation to write high impact posts which erode the credibility.
>>Resisting the temptation to write high impact posts which erode the credibility.
huh ?
Thanks for giving us a mention. We have been getting a great response and thanks to support from blogs like your we are hoping to build credibility in the nice of web 2.0 strategy consulting. We have been blogging at WATBlog since almost a 10 months now so we are trying to put all that experience into helping companies tackle the web 2.0 era and derive longterm benefits from the same.
As far as professional blogging is concerned we at WATBlog don’t monetise the site by placing ads. Its a personal decision as we feel ads and money may skew our voice and make us uneccesarily sensationalize posts. By not monetising we stick to our individual voices and blog whatever we feel appropriate and whenever possible. If professional just means money then WATBlog and WATBloggers aren’t professional but if it means a unbiased invidualistic and passionate group of bloggers then may be we are professional
cool blog!
cool blog!