“Give full feed that anyone can subscribe and read full post without coming to site. In this way blogs can be bookmarked and people remember the blogs.”

-Piyal Kundu

Piyal Kundu, a Web Designer by profession always wanted to share his knowledge, experience and a real picture of our country and society with world and soon he found blogging as a platform where he can share his knowledge with huge crowd available on the internet and then born “Oldindianphotos”in December 2008. The blog is all about India and its history with about 380 blog posts and more than one thousand images.

Piyal says ” I have started collecting old vintage images from various sources of Internet but found that no site is available on this subject but thousands of old Indian images available mixed with other images in different websites. Maximum of these images are out of copyright and in Public Domain. So I started to publish these Indian subcontinent related rare vintage images in my blog from December 2008. Photographs in my blog, covers from 1850s to 1970s and every post are label so users can pick date, place, from right-hand side categories. This blog is not only related to present geographical India, but also related to whole Indian subcontinent. So Users can find old photos of present Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar apart from India.

Some Pictures are from the time of Indian Mutiny, Partition of India and Second World War. Some very old Archeological photographs are also available. I focus not only on famous people or place but also on common people and their lives and sufferings.”

Wanna… know more about Indian history, read the interview of Piyal Kundu.

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Blogger’s Detail:

Blogger’s Name: Piyal Kundu

About yourself: I am a Web Designer by profession and started blogging in 2005. My first 3-4 blogs were just experiments and after that I started my first technology blog but discontinued after one year due to lack of time. At that time I was more busy in editing Wikipedia in Bengali. From my school life I was very much fond of History and my interest in photography began when I started to use Internet. Actually I prefer to study good photographs rather than using my own camera skill. I am neither a photographer nor a historian but I like both.

Age: 28

Occupation / Profession: Web Designer

Blog name and URL: Old Indian Photos / http://oldindianphotos.blogspot.com

Blog Focus Area, domain: History, Photography, India,

Blog launched on: 12 December 2008

Monthly visits on website: According to Google Analytics November report: Unique Vistis: 5304 Pageviews: 25690

Do you have team of bloggers? No

Interest / Activities: Music, World Movies, Documentaries, Photography, Anything related to First and Second World War, Wikipedia, Computing in regional language

Located at: Naihati, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India

Naihati is located about 40KMs north of Kolkata

Contact Details:

Twitter Id: http://twitter.com/piyal

Facebook Id: http://facebook.com/piyal

Linkedin Id: http://in.linkedin.com/in/piyalkundu

Email ID: piyalkundu@gmail.com

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Interview (Q&A Round):

Q. According to you what is a blog?

Blog is a personal place where anyone can

• Express his / her feelings openly
• Share knowledge and information
• Protest anything bad
• Make money
• Waste time

Q. What motivated you to start blogging?

I want to share information and collectively grow our knowledge, increase understanding ability about ourselves, society and country.

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

I have started collecting old vintage images from various sources of Internet but found that no site is available on this subject but thousands of old Indian images available mixed with other images in different websites. Maximum of these images are out of copyright and in Public Domain. So I started to publish these Indian subcontinent related rare vintage images in my blog from December 2008.

I hope anybody interested about Indian history and culture can take a look and get an idea about old India. India is changing every day, now it is impossible to imagine how this amazing place looked hundred years ago.

Some very good books are available on this subject but the books are mostly very costly and out of reach of common people. So I think this blog can fill the gap.

Photographs in my blog, covers from 1850s to 1970s and every post are label so users can pick date, place, from right-hand side categories. This blog is not only related to present geographical India, but also related to whole Indian subcontinent. So Users can find old photos of present Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar apart from India.

Some Pictures are from the time of Indian Mutiny, Partition of India and Second World War. Some very old Archeological photographs are also available. I focus not only on famous people or place but also on common people and their lives and sufferings.

Q. Why reader should come on your blog…What is the best part of your blog?

This blog is for the people who love history and photography. Apart from them scholars, researchers can use my blog as a source of information.

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

I use Blogger because:-

• It is free and simpl.
• It is easy to customize and maintain and many tutorials are available.

Q. How frequent you update your blog? How many post your blog is carrying at present?
I tried to update once in a week. But sometimes there are gaps because of professional commitment and lack of time.

Currently my blog holds 380 posts and more than one thousand images.

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

I have registered my blog with various search engines and blogging community websites. Also I have modified template as per SEO recommendations. I give full feed so users can read my full post in feed readers without coming to my blog. I use tools for automatically post links in Twitter and Facebook and users can subscribe my blog so that they can automatically get full posts in their inbox.

Majority of users are coming from Google search. As my blog is full of images, Google image search is one of the biggest source.

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

Be original. Come with a new idea and do not copy any one. If you copy any information from other site please give full credit to them. Give full feed that anyone can subscribe and read full post without coming to site. In this way blogs can be bookmarked and people remember the blogs.

Use Google Analytics for understanding how users visiting and using your blog. Keep a watch on keywords. Register your blog with search engines, blogging community websites like blogadda.com, blogcatalog.com. Post updates of your blog in Twitter and Facebook.

Q. What you like most about internet and why?

Because Internet is open and information is no longer property of handful of people.

Q. What you hate most about internet and why?

People addicted to Internet waste lots of time without any cause. Also social responsibilities and personal relationships can get hampered with increased use of Internet.

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?

I have inserted Google ads (AdSense) in my blog posts and feeds. But till not earned anything from it. But I am not worried about that because my blog is not about earning money it is about sharing information. If I get some money in future I will invest for purchasing more server space for my blog.

There are thousands of websites available on blog marketing. So I don’t want to discuss much here but if the idea is good money will come. There is nothing wrong with monetize blogs. Just don’t push or insist people too much for clicking on the ads.

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

There are so many:

• http://www.smashingmagazine.com
• http://www.labnol.org
• http://lifehacker.com
• http://www.alistapart.com
• http://www.shorpy.com/

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