So maybe you’ve been a lurker at one point. Don’t worry; I used to do that all the time and so does 99% of the interweb community. So maybe you’ve become a valued member of your little anime niche and actively discuss anime and the like. Excellent, that’s the whole point of the communities. So maybe you’ve seen some anime blogs and you think that may be an interesting thing to do, that’s brilliant… however, unlike the other two, this one may take some work.

Um, just no…

You can easily just connect to the internet and just go about lurking; that’s basically just ‘surfing the web’. You can just as easily see something that interests you or someplace where you believe your opinion can be counted so I do something, like write a comment and that takes very little effort.

Blogging on the subject, well… now we are talking a whole new dimension where multiple things could go wrong for you from content to technical problems to even just not knowing what to do and where there are just so many things you could do… So here I’ll begin a multi-part ‘guide’ (more like general tips and a few good pointers) to how to start blogging, and more specifically, how to blog anime. We begin with first, the most important thing….

The most important thing

First, this may not be that obvious and I’ll sound like an idiot mentioning it but, ‘Do you actually want to blog?’ No seriously, before I’m labelled as a nub, can you imagine taking a regular amount of your time to blog. A post is not something that you can easily pull out of your ass, unless you’re one of those people but damn are they rare and much better off then we are. If you’re not seriously about actually doing it and are just fooling yourself, you are going to waste your time.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to be diligent. I mean, I myself am as lazy as the next guy and I’m sure ‘most’ of us have actual lives, with these things like work and school. I’m not asking you to consider this as your full time job (unless you’re prepared for such a thing but blogging anime seems the wrong way to go in this business), this is supposed to be your hobby but like all good hobbies, they are only great if you keep at it and actually do something.

Take for example, I was a big Warhammer 40K player a few years back, and I got my hands on a good allotment of money and bought me a good amount of models and ready to go at it with a 1500 point army. However, that wasn’t going to happen unless I actually took them out of the box and put them together, finally finishing by painting the whole lot.

What happened to all of that? Well, the figures are all in an assortment of boxes sitting at the top of my shelf picking up dust now. The hobby I had found so great just suddenly didn’t appeal to me anymore, and neither did I get anything out of it or any of my friends who wanted to fight a fresh new army get anything out of this either. Everything fell through because I didn’t do anything.

Think blogging will be the easiest thing in the world, think again because if you’re not willing to put in the work, then you’re going to get nothing back. If you’re seriously considering blogging anime, then honestly, anime must be your passion. The thing is if that passion is enough to get you to getting off your ass and doing something.

I guess the next thing to ask yourself is, ‘Can this truly be your passion that you’ll keep at no matter if you don’t instantly explode as a good blog?’ Some people can look at bloggers like DarkMirage, tj_han or Danny Choo among the whole list of good bloggers that seem to be compulsory parts of everyone’s blogroll and think they could be able to pull off what they do and instantly come out on top.

Well, sadly the world doesn’t work that way or we would all be successfully (damn!)… What they do isn’t just recycling others ideas, they work to their own niche and they refine it to their level and that is one of the major reasons why they succeed and get good readership; because they worked at it.

It shouldn’t come as a shock at all but at starting up a site, you aren’t going to get hits in the thousands to begin with… in fact, I would be very surprised if you did. I first started blogging anime in December 2006 where I had a fairly decent Wordpress hosted blog, and I blogged every so often. It was only after two months that I even reached the 1000 hits mark, and that’s hits, not visits. Getting good or even decent readership that you definitely know you’re doing good for, takes time and unless you’re willing to put in that time, this isn’t the right way for you.

Think to yourself, ‘Do you honestly believe you can make some impact (even a little bit ) to the Otaku community?’ Not up to reading outside the main flow or to try out something extra, then really you’re just going to help clog up the internet with those useless and unoriginal blogs that we usually just skip after a few lines of reading their dribble. Case of point, especially for our generation, people get bored easily and that is especially true if things are just repeated. Unless you are certain you can be opinionated, can give good content or do a good service for the community, then really, you don’t have that much of anything to talk about then.

Think of it this way, ‘Can this keep you interested?’ Who honestly reads our anime blogs? It’s people like us so if you yourself can’t be interested in what you plan to create or do for your blog, how is anyone else? You should be at that lovely age of starting out where the raw passion is at its highest. If this peak isn’t high enough, you’re going to fall on your face.

All of the points above are important to take into consideration before you actually start. And don’t slam yourself either thinking you’re not good enough. The chances are if you can think to yourself that you should do better, the drive to do is already there. You may not become the best blogger, but at least you will be out there doing it…

The articles to come afterwards will include some of these points as well but in better detail with maybe some examples (most of which are probably shameless plugs) from actual content to the technicalities, but now I leave off by just summing up this whole thing…

‘Do you want to blog some Anime?’

Alright, this post was massive, I know and I sort of threw a wall of text at you but the weekend was slow for me and I spent all day yesterday watching a Korean drama. I thought I would make it up for today, and this was all I could think of (although I still think i should have gotten more pics to break up all that text or something).

I’ve had a talk to my friends and some people I know and the general consensus I’ve heard is ‘I just can’t blog…’ You may not know this, but there is another content author on this blog, but Benneh just doesn’t know what to write or even basically what to do although he would like to. At the moment, he’s in the background though, doing coding and general Kyon-esque menial tasks.

So it was then, I got the idea to write a general guide if you will. I’ve read a few articles here and there and it’s true that the anime blogging world has been deteriorating quite a bit and the influx of newer faces just isn’t doing enough to make us start growing as a better community. This is to help those new faces.

Comments on what you thought about it, whether it could help or, from the veterans, whether I’m just talking bullshit or missing something crucial would be most appreciated, because really, I could be considered a newb at this too XD

[~Part of the Better Content Initiative~]