It’s your monthly reminder to “pay” for content by promoting me! And that word-of-mouth is a way more effective method than anything else. Oh, but not if it gets you in trouble for repeating my opinions. And by the way, my Sacred Games reviews are exploding with views, so I am doing spectacular well in views at the moment. But almost no comments, which makes me guess 99.9% of those viewers aren’t really interested in joining the blog community and will be disappearing never to be seen again, so my numbers will drop back down again in a week.
I have the ability to see the general web address that got me clickthroughs, that’s how I know how effective word-of-mouth is (well, word-of-keyboard, I guess, if you type links into a message board), because I can go through to a website and discover the only reference to my site was buried in some comment on a post. I don’t get the exact comment link, so I usually have to dig a little and find the comment that referenced me. And the last few times I have done that, in my digging, I have discovered that people are being mean to you! Because of things I said which you merely repeated or linked back to. That’s horrible! I don’t want people to be mean to you. If you genuinely agree with what I said and want to share it with the world, and are willing to risk blowback for it, then that’s fine. But if you are just sharing because you like me, then I am super grateful, but also you don’t have to keep doing it if it makes people not like you. No need to support me that way, I can handle people not liking me for me, but not not liking you for me, if that makes sense?
With that out of the way, on with my monthly promotion reminder post!
As I said last month, I am looking at this blog as a serious business. I am devoting essentially all of my free time to it, and while I enjoy blogging, I could be doing other things with my free time to build up a writing career instead, so I want to make sure it is worth my doing. And it has been getting seriously off track of where it needs to be to make my time worthwhile.
Things are a wee bit better this month than last month. Partly because I hired a social media person to help with the tediousness of posting the same things over and over and over again to different people and with different hashtags, so I can avoid that time suck and stress. And also largely because Sanju came out and people were excited and interested in reading about it.
However, when I look at my numbers, I can still confirm that my readers retweeting and posting links is the BEST way for me to get new readers. If you are in a Facebook discussion, quote my blog and put up a link back to the original post if you want to refer to me. Or tweet it to people you know on twitter, other fans of the same actor or the same film. Or if you are on another website and they are discussing something relevant, put up a comment with a link back to me.
If every person reading this put up one link to my stuff a month, my views would double. That’s all it takes, and that’s all I am asking in return for the work I put in to provide content for you.
And in return, I will continue providing content as my views continue to grow. And if that doesn’t happen, I will take it as a sign that blogging is not the best use of my time and move on to a different challenge.
dontcallitbollywood 
Do Twitter DMs count…I’ve shared some of your stuff to people on a one-on-one basis like that..Sometimes they retweet it. There is a Paromita Vohra(great columnist) who loved your feminist critique piece. This and Baradwaj Rangan’s blog are the only places I hang. Everywhere else seems to be “omgomg Nolan is the God of Cinema omgomg”.
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Twitter dms are great! I love them! It’s how all kinds of cool people found me. I think I remember Paromita commenting on the feminist critique piece, that was awesome! That was you? Thank you!
And yeah, I am so sick of Nolan. He’s good, but he’s not the only good thing around.
On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 9:43 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yes she’s cool and one of the few people I know with good reach. I believe she retweeted that piece and a few others. Do you find that your journalistic or analytic pieces find more views or movie reviews?
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Or is it the popularity of the subject?
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Not popularity, but familiarity. A Shahrukh post is usually good just because everyone is familiar with him and everyone has an opinion. So there’s lots and lots of conversation in the comments. But my posts on Tanuja and Nutan, for instance, didn’t garner many views or comments.
On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 10:35 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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It really depends on if they get retweeted. SPOILER movie reviews always get the best views, which is depressing, but that’s the reality we live in and hopefully some of those people stuck around for the analysis instead of just the spoilers. But the big brilliant analytical posts are the ones that tend to get retweeted and repeated more, and then more views. Although not always, some of my really good ones languished without much notice.
Beyond that, it’s all about comment count. The Fanfic and TGIF posts always get solid views, nothing spectacular (I mostly keep them up because they are easy and fun for me), but if a discussion gets started in the comments, then the views take off. The Monday and Wednesday posts are also usually high view counts for the same reason, just the conversation in the comments keeps people coming back.
On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 10:34 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yes I find those with Twitter following(specifically writers) love analytic pieces more.
If you don’t mind me asking, have you been approached by publications? I remember a blogger by the name filmi geek wrote for Outlook India. Maybe if stars (maybe SRK himself because there is so much here about him) could retweet something like that it could garner interest or curiosity in your blog. I’ve seen Anil Kapoor and others retweet reviews from great but unusual or not so popular sources but then, I can’t figure out popularity anyway.
And of course, memes, gifs and multimedia kinda writing go a long way but then you know that already.
Also, what happened to some of the soundcloud reviews? Some of them seem to have disappeared?
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Yeah, I keep tagging stars in my tweets and I asked my new social media person to do as well, the hope is to get retweeted by them. Although it doesn’t make that much difference, I got a beautiful message from Prithviraj about my City of God review, and Madhavan retweeted me twice (because he is so nice) and neither of them had a super big effect on my views.
I would love to write for a publication, I’ve been submitting stuff since before I was blogging, and I am never ever accepted. No one has approached me. I’ve never been paid for my writing, except for my book. I would love to be paid, to have that additional source of income, and also just to reach a wider audience. But I seem to have terrible luck at that kind of thing, I can find readers here, but whenever I submit to a publication, I don’t hear back at all, or I am told that there aren’t readers for what I am writing. It’s very frustrating, because I can read the stuff published and know I am more qualified and a better writer than most of what’s out there. Not all of it, but a lot of it.
Soundcloud costs money! I stopped the podcasts because between soundcloud and the other service, it was costing me $400 a year and not getting me very many listeners, and no readers.
On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 10:54 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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With regards to your writing being better than most of what is written, I agree with you completely!
Some people are part bloggers part column writers. I wonder if they started blogging after getting writing gigs.
Do pieces on Medium cost too?
What about Film Companion? Surely they could use an overseas correspondent.
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I agree with all of this! Do you know anyone at Film Companion? Because I can’t seem to get anyone to even consider my writing. Best I can do is keep blogging and hope someone notices me here, because formal submissions seem to do nothing for me.
I don’t know about Medium, but most of the places like wordpress or soundcloud make money by forcing content providers to pay to be published. If it is free for you, the audience, it is probably because the creators are paying. WordPress has a free option, but I upgraded so I could have my own domain and more storage space for content, so now it costs me about $100 a year, and that’s where WordPress is getting their money.
On Tue, Jul 17, 2018 at 9:43 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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So referrals arent exactly what you are counting, but people subscribing or donating?
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I love new readers! New readers are great But they are hard to track, unless they are someone like you who starts commenting a lot. I can’t tell if it is the same old readers viewing my posts, or new readers who aren’t commenting.
So for counting, I have the overall numbers, and where they came from (twitter, facebook, search engine), but I can’t really tell what’s going on with them unless the numbers make a big leap up. Donating I can tell, and I know if it was someone new, and that warms the cockles of my heart.
Anyway, yes! Refer people to me! If you want. And if it doesn’t get you in trouble and make people mad somehow.
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(Reply to comment on Medium)
I don’t know if you need to pay. I came across this a few weeks ago on how to use and earn on Medium, caveat obviously being that Medium has published this so idk what they’ve chosen to hide.
View at Medium.com
Unfortunately Idon’t know anyone on Film Companion. But I’m sure proposing a couple of trial videos on their channel could ensure some reach…I might be completely wrong here.
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Thanks for the link! It does look like Medium has a slightly different format. I’ll have to investigate further.
I have had lousy luck with cold sending in things, and from what I can tell from exploring further, most writers are hired through personal connections not through cold submissions anyway. Unless it is a website that doesn’t pay writers, and then they will take anything. Not for Film Companion, but these websites in general, it’s a lot of “I worked on the school newspaper with so and so” or “I was good friends with him in grad school” kind of stuff. Curse my anti-sociability!
On Tue, Jul 17, 2018 at 10:27 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Maybe not threaten your readers with leaving? I’ve actually decided to do so today. These repeated monthly calls for $$$ are pretty distasteful and tacky putting the onus on the readers and not on the simple fact that your content may not be shareworthy. I’ve been a lurker and enjoy some of the posts, but to continuously drag out these thinly veiled threats are just in poor form. If you need the bucks, get another job. But, many of us have been saying (via DM, PM, etc.) that is is simply annoying to have you guilt us into donating. A positive attitude demonstrating a collective interest in furthering the fun of deconstructing Bolly+ films would have been a constructive. Your constant whining and bitching is why I am over and out.
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Thank you for commenting! I can’t know what people are thinking if they don’t tell me, I have no idea what conversations are happening in PM and DM.
I have a full time job, 40 hours a week. And for the first time since I was 19, it is my only job. I usually to have a second, and a third, and a fourth. Right now, my second job is this blog, 6 hours a day 7 days a week.
I used to think it was “tacky” and “poor form” to talk about money as well, and then I hit a rough patch in my life and suddenly reminding my boss about my paycheck was what would make the difference between having food that week and going hungry. And I learned the lesson that my time and my labor has value, and I shouldn’t be ashamed to ask to be paid by those who are profiting from it.
You may be right that this is a poor way to go about asking for money, or shares, there might be a better option, I am open to ideas. But I do have a right to put up two posts a month, which you are free to ignore, reminding you that there is a way to pay back the enjoyment you are getting from my labor.
That’s my right as the owner of this blog. And it is also my right as a human being. And I am not going to apologize for it.
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Exactly! This whole “let’s all be Victorian and hush the uncomfortable/practical part of running a blog” is very last season. I’d rather have the reminder than discovering that the blog is gone all of a sudden.
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Thank you, that’s nice to hear. I’ve followed blogs that suddenly disappeared too, and I would have rather have had some warning, even if I couldn’t do anything about it.
On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 1:42 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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‘a positive attitude demonstrating a collective interest in furthering the fun of deconstructing Bolly+ films’-in other words she keep writing the ‘not-share worthy content’ for the fun of all of us & not spoil the fun by mentioning about tacky things like money. Did you cultivate your sense of entitlement by ‘deconstructing’ the Bollywood movies where everyone’s rich & don’t have to worry abt earning a living?
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“Tacky” as opposed to the very noble and tasteful act of talking about someone behind their back? That, to me, falls under some of our worst stereotypes about desi uncles/aunties.
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Ok, I have to say the dialogue-Dasaa, ethaa ee alawalathi😉
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Haha! 😀
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