his blog post will be super wordy, it’s a 3000+ thousand words! One of my longest blog post I ever wrote.
Beside making the big announcement, talking about my plans, visions and goals on my future as a blogger. Here are also 8 collage collection of photos taken over my entire 8 years of blogging, (also one or two liner to conclude experience in that year) 2015 is my 9th year, but there’s only 8 collages, my 1st year of blogging photos are not included… Cos I think I look too ugly in them… LOL. Don’t wanna remind myself how cheena I used to look like. Lol. So we begin with the slightly better looking pics, 2008.
Making these collages and looking through them… I felt really emotional… (I m very emotional these days) like I felt I really came a long way, I was only 18 when I started blogging, now I m already 27…. I’ve been thru so much things in these 9 years. *teary eyes* come, take a walk down my memory lane with me… ↓↓↓↓
2007-
I started blogging not for money or fame, i was those idiots
who started blogging because Friendster couldn’t store more
than 20 photos. I thought blogging can store unlimited photos. lol.
2008-
2008, i used to blog about EVERYTHING, alot of nonsense and random stuff.
2009-
Blogging industry starting to take off in this year!
2010-
This is one of the year when i started to be really anal over
my blog post qualities; the death of frequent blog updates… lol.
2011-
I was very inspired in the year of 2011, I remember i was
constantly searching for new iconic styles and very loyal to
celebrities who i follow. lol.
2012-
This is one of the year that i made MANY bloggers friends
and i started travelling a lot, overseas blog posts FTW!
2013-
The last chapter of my online photobook trilogy *sad*
maybe i could start on a new series…? this is one of
the most tough blogging year as i had the 2 years
engagement, trying to juggle between two “jobs” i
wanted to die.
2014 – The highiest gross of income i’ve ever earn from blogging.
well, these are the photos i took by far, very not impressive…
because i m taking a break lah, Give me a break! lol, but 2015
will be a new begining for me, i finally doing blogging full time
for the 1st time.
OKAY back to the main topic:
After months of being inactive (being a Sophie, inside joke: as she is most inactive one in our blogger clique) on Social media platforms and even longer absence on my blog… I m proudly announcing that…
BITCHES, I M BACK!!
I AM A FULL TIME BLOGGER
♥
Officially I am announcing that I will be a full time blogger. Even blogging for the past 8 and 1/2 years, I have never blog full time like ever. there’s always some other commitments in my life while I was blogging, like part time jobs, school, internship and the 2 years commitment. I finished my 2 years commitment last year end, and I took a really really long break, during this period of time, I avoid taking up jobs, i wanted to be carefree for a Period of my life, like no job, no stress, no nothing for a few months. I wanted to jump back in blogging full time 3 months ago actually, but I encounter some emotional struggles, I was very very emo for the longest time, but I guess I m more or less recovered and I really really need something to distract me, okay, why not start working?
Even though never had been a full time blogger, but during my peak period of taking up advertorials, *ONCE* (yes, just once) upon a time (in 2014), I actually earn a 5 digits figure within a month from blogging, okay la, it’s considered very impressive for a male blogger, the willing-to-pay clients for local male bloggers are very very little actually. Compared to the HUGE market for the female bloggers. So I think if I go all out and be a hardworking blogger and thrive to grab every single client, I think having a decent amount of income would be possible.
I will come in to gamble for the next 6 months till the end of the year, I have set a target of income per month, a saving goal, if I could reach the my targets, I will be continue to be a full time blogger after the six months too!
On this decision of being a full time blogger is NOT easy. Well, I used to super slack, who is extremely lazy and don’t update my blog often. Announcing to be a full time blogger, I have to take my job seriously, be responsible and make sure I don’t give half fuck work, I no longer have the excuse of saying blogging is not my full time thing or I m just blogging for leisure.
Being a full time blogger, I’ve made many decisions, set many goals and also reflected on myself as a blogger, here are the following aspects that I’ve decided to improve, change and or carry on.
In journey of being a blogger, u get the positive attention, for sure you too get negative ones. Like haters and stalkers. I used to be super open online, I blog about everything, my personal life, my friends, my relationship, my silly fights, my dramas in life. But things get more complicated when you started to have more readers and followers. I felt like I couldn’t put myself out there anymore, be more open about how I feel and what I think. Becos I m known person. I swear this feeling sucks balls, i hate my online persona more and more that I stop blogging and tweeting. If you noticed ever since 2012 I blog less and less (personal stuff), I tweet less and less too. I felt being being a blogger now for me it’s so fake, that I always have to at my best behaviour OR ELSE THE HATERS ARE GONNA HATE ON ME.
Yes, for sure there’s many things in my life that I do not wish to disclose online, everyone have to rights to their own room of privacy, BUTTT I just hate that my rights for even saying things I love or hate is taken away from me, even the person I am comfortable within my comfort zone is also locked up.
Sadly, I m becoming one of those ‘Instagram’ bloggers, those who simply just post pretty pics, add on some irrelevant and make-no-sense, emotional-tumblr-inspired or self-help-self-motivational quotes and worst of all with absolutely ZERO personality, the thing about such bloggers, if they DIE one day and No body knows, or cares because nobody know anything about them at personal level.
Yes, you might get a 100k followers on Instagram, but trust me if one day your Instagram account got deactivated, you instantly become a nobody. Your pretty photos is ALL people follow you for, you don’t get comments other than “you are so pretty!” “Wah, this photo shoot is so awesome!” That’s it, most of the time you don’t even get any comments, as nobody knows your story, nobody know who is this blogger really is.
The best way to justify someone who is a “Instagram” blogger is to evaluate their overall followers base across all social platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, Blog stats and even Dayre. Like Twitter, Dayre and blog stats are best ways to know if your followers actually keen to “read” what you have to say instead of just looking at just your nicely composed photos.
These ‘instagram’ bloggers will never get much haters, Because they simply do not have a opinion, nothing to hate on, as haters only go after people who have a opinion. Yes, it so much easier to be them. When it suddenly dawn down on me that as such “Instagram” blogger, they are so easily replaced and forgotten…. That is actually my biggest fear as a blogger.
With the decision of the me coming back to blogosphere, I also hereby to promise myself to be the one of those hated bloggers around, I don’t care if I m gonna be hated, I have wayyyyyy moved passed that. I will again voice out my opinions. I will be the person that I used to be.
On another note, Meeting more and more bloggers in real life in the recent years made me realized not everyone is who they are online and offline.
For example, I have known the super fun and funniest blogger online, but in person they could completely different, prude, stern, very serious and even a big time wet blanket.
As for me, the Yutakis online is Vain, loud, steady (supportive of my close friends), full of crappy jokes, bad grammar, super emotional, shameless and vulgar.
The person I am offline… Very much the same, maybe not very confident and a little shy in meeting strangers.
I will try to be as close as I could be from the person I am in real life, I will share as much as I could /want. BUT I am very sorry, I m still a human afterall, I do need my privacy, (thank you guys for respecting my privacy so far) maybe you wouldn’t get to see the 100% me, but I swear I will (try to) bring you as close as my comfort zone allows, I really hope you guys could understand and respect me on that. Thank you.
2015 blog updates by far is not looking good. Lol. I only post 14 post within 6 months, and 5 of them are actually all Sophie’s face. Lol. So technically I only updated my blog for 9 times, that’s only 1 post a month on average… That’s major pathetic.
There are 3 main factors when comes to blogging, quality (how good the content/photos are), quantity (how much content/photos in ea post) and frequency. When I start blogging back in 2007, obviously there wasn’t any quality. Lol. I used to post photos I took from webcam and even photos that ‘edited’ with Microsoft’s Paint Tool. LOL. But back then the quantity and frequency were super high, I blahed 20 blog posts a month at my peak!!!! That’s like almost blogging everyday. Lol.
Later on I become more anal on the quality, and I love the impact of smashing one tons of updates at one go, I totally heck care the frequency already, I update my blog twice a month but with super long, endless posts. The quality obviously is greatly improved than before.
But to be honest to build a faithful pool of readers actually major relay on the frequency of the blog updates. I used to have a group of really loyal readers who reads my blog everyday, although I have more followers now but I felt they are no longer very engaging and loyal as they used to be. Which actually saddens me.
Therefore my blog resolution is to be focus on the frequency and quality of blog updates and ditch the quantity concerns. By doing so, I would update my blog more frequently, like maybe 2-3 post a week…? But I had to control on the quantity really, sometimes I really can’t make up my mind when comes to photo selection, (the problem with snapping too much photos) I tend to love all of them and waste too much time editing them one by one. I need to CUT THROAT from now on. I will try to keep face photos on one post less than 20. That’s an reasonable amount that I think I could produce within a few days.
Not only I will be productive on my blog, I will be updated more often across all my social media platforms; Like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Also now I have snap chat now! (more about snapchat below)! I m not sure about dayre yet, as much I love posting on dayre, it will really really affect the frequency of my actually blog updates, I *might* duplicate the 50% of the blog post content on dayre, then the 100% of the post over my blog(?) I do have some loyal followers and readers on my dayre but I want to drive traffic to my actual blog.
Yes, due to my personal struggles, I actually neglected my Instagram as well, I used update so much on my Instagram! And I get back on that too!!! Promise!
Yes for sure I will be taking up (actually already did) more advertorials when I blog full time. But I know to make my clients happy I need to have contents to keep up the readership as well, nobody will wanna patronize a blog with too much advertorials, it’s not fair to the readers.
Although I tried my best to compensate with more effort on each and every advertorials as I always think since its paid by advertisers, I ought to produce good quality posts to make their money worth awhile and more eyeball worthy.
I still very persistent on the being a old fashion D.I.Y. blogger, all contents of my blog advertorial or posts are produced by myself, except when mentioned, even if there’s help, these ‘help’ are actually my human tripods, i m just too anal to let others to take pictures of me, I prefer being in total control (Grade A control freak), composition, angle, even where I stand in the picture…. Here’s my directions to my ‘help': “Just hold the camera here, Dont move, flip the screen over, standstill, click snap when I say ‘okay’.”
It’s really very sad to see more and more bloggers no longer produce their own blogging contents, even PAY and HIRE A TEAM of professionals to do their WORK. Like photographers, videographers, content contributors and even creative assistants… Why not just hire nanny to spoon feed you too..? Lol. I always think blogging is a hobby and something you enjoy doing BY YOURSELF.
I get more and more speechless each and every time when I see these ‘bloggers’ trying to reduce their workload by shoutout to hire people to do their work. Hello?? What kind of blogger ARE YOU??
I will continue to put in more effort on my paid engagements as its my source of income now. But I will promise to not let me blog be overload with adverts only, I will try my best to keep the ratio at 1:2 ( adverts posts : non-advert posts).
My full time blogger idol… Will be qiuqiu! Only if I could be as persistent like her! You know back in the days when we all of us were still very hardworking bloggers, xx, Qiu, Sophie, Miya and i, During the raise of the micro blogging social media platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and dayre, some of us, slowly surrender to them, we blog less and less, and update more and more those less effort platforms and slowly neglected our own blogs, this Qiu still blogs a 10 to 15 posts a month!!!! I think at my peak blogging period recent years Was only 6 posts a month… And that only happen like 1 or 2 times. Lol.
With Qiu as my blog idol. I will be more motivated to be like her, MORE BLOG UPDATES.
I don’t worry about the contents of my upcoming blog updates… You have no idea how much CRAZY, (let me say it again) CRAZY amount of backdate posts I have. I always mentioning that I went overseas, BUT NEVER once I actually blog about them. Not counting countless events, parties and hangouts… If one day I am bedridden (touch wood, literally I just reach out to touch the wooden bed frame, lol.) I think I could still stay online active for a year or two (OR EVEN MORE) b’cos I just have tooooooooo much unpublished photos already.
As Sophie recently just cleared her 2012 backdated blog posts. I think mine could be just as bad, think I have travelogue photos that pile up all the way back 2011!!! Even before that I also do have blog posts that I didn’t blog about, but let’s just focus on the more “interesting” contents to clear la hor… Lol. like my trips to Rome, Venice, Hongkong, Macau, Japan (3 times!!), china, Indonesia and recent trips to bangkok and Penang Malaysia! Like if you count, that’s like 11 long posts Alr. Omg. Lol. At times I really don’t know which post to start on, I then start to daydream away and Finally… decide to sleep instead. But since now I m gonna blog full time. I have to be responsible as a blogger.
I also fresh ideas on new type of posts, currently, I mainly have three type of posts, the photo book style travelogue posts, photobook style concept advertorials, scrapbook (with a lot of hand drawn, sometimes moving, GIF and doodles) style event/outing posts!
As a full time blogger, NEW CONTENTS!!
I will be add in posts with LESS visuals and MORE words (like this current post), like talking about how I feel, thoughts and self reflections. Which helps to grow my blog to be more personal.
Also I m very keen to add in short post to share new things that I discovered, like some iOS apps (since I spent most of my time/money on my phone/apps) that I been abusing. Which I think will be interesting, because, as a blog reader myself I hope I learn more interesting apps so I could I download and use/play!
OOTD & HAUL posts! I m really no fashionista, I actually I think I am quite alternative on fashion choices, but I do *think* I have a very strong personal style (个人fashion口味很重). Like I personally dislike a lot of the current men fashion trends (eg: the monotone style, over sized boxy tees and the new balance sports shoes, lol.), I would NEVER EVER follow fashion trends blindly ONLY because its IN, I will only buy things that is suitable to my own style or which I like. I will be blogging more on my personal style which will be totally alternative (not trendy). Once in a while I will step out of my comfort zone and try something different for the pictures, BUTTTT for sure I m not gonna change my entire wardrobe! It will be informative and interesting for the minority people who like my personal style, if u no likey, it’s okay la, I don’t like all the fashion styles out there myself anyway. Lol.
ANNNNNNDDD… I started Snap Chat!!! And for the 1st time in my life I started posting videos of myself (frequently) Not gonna lie, I personally used to hate videos. The low self-esteem part of me always think I can’t “save” myself if I look bad, i couldn’t photoshop them. So for the longest time I don’t do videos, but with the help from Snap Chat, I m taking baby steps now, I m starting to show my face on videos. Lol. And also you can’t photo/edit your photos that you post snap chat, so I think it’s training me to be more accepting of how I look too. I m slightly more real on snapchat as well! Each week or two, I will posting all highlighted Snap Chat videos on my blog too, as they are auto deleted after 24 hours, kinda awesome and sad as I do hope to keep some of these vids/pics for memorial purposes! Win-win, more contents for my blog too!
PS
♥
All in all, I m concluding this crazy wordy post. I think I took enough breaks, too long a break is actually very unhealthy for me, I start to being very lazy, no ambition and think too much.
Lol, so far things are looking very good for me, I have long term sponsors and advertising clients lining up for the 2nd half of the year! And I been making a lot of plans and organizing projects for the 2nd half of the year too! It’s time to drag my lazy ass back to work. Once again.
WATCH OUT BLOGOSPHERE,
YUTAKIS IS BACK.
