“Find a few blogs that inspire you and cultivate some relationships with the bloggers.”

- Jennifer Kumar

We are happy to present our first cross border blogger, Jennifer Kumar, an American who has adapted Indian culture into daily American life; Jennifer runs Alaivani, a blog where she shares her experience, way of life as an Indian and also on other random subjects.

The blog Alaivani, born in 2006, however this blog is the result of Jennifer’s another blog which she started way back in 1996. The blog gets around 150,000- 300,000 (average about 5,000- 10,000 per day) page views in a month.

The best part we liked in Jennifer’s blog is she keep her post in line with the objective of blog and that is to show the experience, joy, and different colors of culture mix.

A must read blog and interview for those who are new to blogging and also for the `veteran bloggers too.

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Blogger’s Detail:

Name: Jennifer Kumar

Age: 34

Blog name and URL: Alaivani   http://www.alaivani.com

Blog Focus Area, domain: An American who has adapted Indian culture into daily American life

Blog launched on: March 2006 (though, this blog is born from my original website of the same focus, which started in 1997)

Monthly visits on website: 150,000- 300,000 (average about 5,000- 10,000 per day)

Do you have team of bloggers?

I do have a list of regular and one-time contributors, who generously contribute articles or photographs as their schedule permits.

Interest / Activities:

I like to cook Indian vegetarian food, go for walking, hiking or biking, travel, meet new people, arts and crafts (soap making, rangoli), and to celebrate Indian festivals in my  home in America.

Located at: Rochester, New York, USA

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Interview (Q&A Round):

Q. What motivated you to start blogging?

In 1996, when the Internet was pretty new to many, my classmates and I took up a project to create a website for our academic department in college. While teaching myself HTML and putting up the site, I thought I could make a personal website for myself. I started by posting some photos and thoughts about Indian and American culture, acquired some dedicated readers, gained encouragement and continued. I started hosting my website on Tripod, where much of the “old site” remains. I opened up this current blog, Alaivani, in 2006.

Q. What area or topic you generally cover in your blog, any special reason behind it?

The main theme is ‘An American’s adaptation of Indian culture in America.’ My aim is to share how we can live together in a multi-cultural world, learn and, if so inclined, adapt aspects of different cultures and lifestyles to enhance and improve our own quality of life. This was the theme of the old site, and continues in Alaivani. I was more encouraged to continue this theme after having lived in Chennai for two years. Having lived in the college hostel and with typical Tamil families, I experienced typical daily routines and schedules of everyday people leading normal, everyday lives. This is an experience I would have missed as a typical tourist. In my blog, I want to explore this and highlight that though on the surface we may look different and express certain aspects of life differently, we can find some common ground, appreciate other’s unique life perspective and, if so inclined, adapt the good aspects of life from others to enhance our own daily life experiences.

My aim is to share India’s multifaceted culture with everyone and also to showcase stories and experiences of Indian culture expressed in different countries around the globe. Though a majority of the contributors highlight Indian cultural expressions in India or America, a few unique stories on my blog highlight Indian cultural adaptation in China, Mauritius, and Singapore. Additionally, another layer of sharing is in Indians who move to different areas within India, and how the culture shock happens from state to state. This is a layer of cultural understanding I think people unaware of India’s cultural vastness may not appreciate until exposed to it.

Q. Which blogging platform you are using (wordpress, blogspot, bloggers etc), any reason about it?

On Alaivani, I use Dot Nuke Net (DNN). My husband chose this because I originally wanted to monetize my blog and sell stuff on it. I have yet to launch that.

I do host themed blogs on Indian cooking and others at blogger. Blogger has a lot of advantages over DNN, but I will stick it out with DNN for now!

Q. How frequent you update your blog? How many post your blog is carrying at present?

I have close to 400 posts on Alaivani- and probably a few hundred more on the other blogs and old websites. I add new blog posts two to three times a week. I do updates on various articles and information as needed.

Q. What tools you use to increase your blog readership and bring people on your blog? Do you use social networking sites?

This is a good question, and one that I did not realize the scope of until I started really thinking about it and becoming more aware that it is indeed marketing! I have quite a few techniques I use to maintain and increase readership.
- I have had a Yahoo! Group since 2002 where I posted updates and sent e-mail newsletters to group members.
- I have had a regular column in my friend’s online newsletter, Monday Mail for the past two to three years which has been fruitful for us both.
- My blog is listed on Kerala Blog Roll. Here, I get to access blog posts from Keralites around the world and learn about Indian culture in different parts of the globe. The only downside for me is that about half of the posts are in Malayalam, and I can’t understand it.
- I have an active Facebook and Orkut page – both of which are the easiest way for me to keep in touch with readers and fans and also post my RSS feeds. Sometimes, I post notes and videos in Facebook that are not available on my blog or YouTube page, getting new followers on Facebook, hence following my blog through Facebook as well.
- Though I have used many blogger networks, Mybloglog has been my favorite and easiest to access and interact with people. Though I keep stats on my blog, I am not much into analyzing the stats. My free account in Mybloglog helps me to see top links or key word searches that draw people to my blog. Based on those data, I create new posts to attract those readers back.
- I am open to contributing articles to other blogs and websites. For sometime, I was a contributor to Desi Pundit, and have contributed articles to Shiva’s Arms (Blog) and zine5.com.
- I also host over 100 videos on YouTube and photos on flickr. As I have limited bandwith and storage on my blog platform, I began using my flickr account to host the pictures, including photos from contributors. This has allowed contributors to my blog to share more photos than in the past- and now have almost 20 photo contributors to my blog!
- I have taken to recruiting new long-term or one-time contributors. Most of these contributors come by accident when I am doing research on articles, I find them, contact them, and most are quite thrilled to participate. Others, mostly seasoned contributors like the ones withprofiles on my blog, wrote to me with contributions.
I have additional social networks listed on my blog, too.

Q. Any specific tips you have for new bloggers who want to make it in the blogsphere?

I find I am more successful and get more inspiration when I do not blog in isolation. Bloggers enjoy supporting each other. Find a few blogs that inspire you and cultivate some relationships with the bloggers. This is how word of mouth really happens. If other bloggers trust you and you trust them, that reputation becomes known. People will enjoy not only visiting your blog, but e-mailing you, leaving comments, referring their friends, maybe even getting you some media attention (outside the blogosphere).

Treat others like you’d want to be treated. Before leaving a comment on someone else’s blog think how you’d feel or react if it was your blog. I love it and am thankful to people when they leave encouraging comments, comments to praise or start a dialogue (even if they disagree). I do not appreciate people leaving comments if they simply leave their URL, try to sell me their products or leave some spam over there. It happens frequently and it becomes cumbersome for the blogger to clean it out on occasion.

It’s better to write quality posts than quantity. I struggle with this often because ideally I’d like to post three times a week. When I started out with this site, I wanted to post four times a week. Then when I was sick or did not have something to write about I’d leave posts that really had no substance to them or ‘I’ll see you when I’m better posts.’ I recently decided that if I did not have something of substance that related to the blog’s theme to post, I would not post anything. I did this for two reasons: one is when analyzing the stats, those particular posts got few if any hits (and some of those posts I did put some time into) which means people are not interested in those topics, and two, when particular posts don’t get hits, other posts posted within the same time frame got lower hits than usual because the readers lost faith that I am writing on topics associated with the blog, and probably had other places on the net to spend some time.

Q. Do you earn revenue through your blog? If yes then how a blogger should monetize his / her blog? If no, then any plans in future?

Monetizing Monitizing my blog was a plan from day one, but then I have yet to find a good and fruitful way of doing this. Google ads are on my blog in cycles. I do make a little money from this- every four or five months. I have stayed away from ad words and monetizing by randomized image-based ads because they not only take away from the clean look of the blog, but some image-based ads place images into my blog that I find offensive. I do not want to make money from those types of ads. I also use Amazon to post ads of different things I talk about on my blog. I think Amazon is making more money than me, as I have yet to get any checks from them!

I think if a blogger wants to monetize there are infinite ways of doing this- that can reach beyond the scope of Google, Amazon and all these image or text based advertisements. Some have monetized their blog by specializing in some topics and then offering services- which becomes a true entrepreneurial venture. I am hoping my blog will lead me to this as I start a venture in cross-cultural coaching and mentoring.

Q. What are your other favorite blogs which you follow, can you list the top 5 such blogs?

Africa Expats Wives Club
Adjusting to life and cultural situations in Nairobi, Kenya in East Africa as told by a UK Expat who’s been there for a number of years.
Fourth Sense Samiyal
An inspirational south Indian inspired cooking blog. Recipes become more mouthwatering with the superb, artistic photography done by Nithya.
Hijab Style
A UK based Muslim girl shares style tips for the hijabis.
Krishna Kumar @Flickr
My husband’s photography blog of our home life and travels around US and India.
Raji’s Ramblings
Raji, from Chennai talks shares wonderful narratives and personal experience on cultural change and vibrancy in Chennai.

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