Coffee With Amit Agarwal - India’s first professional blogger

Hi Guys,

Its time for another interview on Coffee With Sundar! This time, it is none other than India’s first professional blogger. Please welcome Amit Agarwal to Coffee With Sundar. Its indeed a great honour to have Amit on this blog. Amit holds a B Tech Computer Science degree. He worked for a brief while after that. He then took up blogging as his profession. Needless to say, I am one of the many many followers of Digital Inspiration - http://www.labnol.org/
Without further Ado, its over to the interview.

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Coffee With Amit Agarwal

Me: Sundar Rajan G S
AA: Amit Agarwal

Me: Hi Amit! Welcome to CWS! When did you start blogging? Why did you quit a mainstream job and take up blogging as a profession? What is it about blogging that you liked the most?

AA: I started blogging some four years ago and quit my job around the same time. I was very active on forums like Experts Exchange. So blogging was just an extension.

Me: Digital Inspirations has made a lot of strides over the past few years. One of the top rated technology blogs, Indibloggies award for technology 2006, 40th most favourited blog on the web to name a few. How did you accomplish this feat starting from scratch? Can you share some incidents? What are the some of the mistakes in this path, that you could have avoided?

AA: I guess being consistent all these years helped me build a good audience for the blog. Secondly, these offline conferences like the barcamps also help me stay in touch with readers.
I have made tons of mistakes in these years but the biggest one was starting my blogging career on a blogspot domain. Ah!Me: I agree with you! Blogspot is quite a pain.
Me: What are the blogs that you read? How do you manage the information overdose on the internet?

AA: Information overload is a major issue as I have couple of hundred feeds in my reader but all the “must read” feeds are in one folder called “0 Day” (it’s always on the top in the list because of that 0) - When I am in a hurry, I just mark everything read except articles in that 0-Day folder.
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-to-reduce-rss-stress-in-your.htmlMe: That link was indeed helpful. What do you like to tell people who want to take blogging as a profession? Is it even feasible to think of blogging as a profession
AA: Make sure you have something to fall back upon. Don’t give up studies for blogging. If you are in a job, get some decent work experience before making the jump. It’s fun but there are risks involved. http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/01/should-you-drop-from-school-make.html

Me: Hmmm…. I agree with you.
Me: You have been blogging on technology which is generic enough for a large community to follow. What do you think about personal blogs? It probably makes sense to one person or a small group of friends of the writer. What are your views on such blogs?

AA: Agree, it is relatively easy to develop readership in the tech domain but you know what, some of my favorite blogs are actually personal blogs.

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Thanks a lot Amit. Those words should be very motivating for a lot of bloggers who write personal blog. Readers, Hope you enjoyed this edition of Coffee With Experts. This is another proud moment for me and for my blog!

For the previous episodes of Coffee With Experts, please click here and scroll down.

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