How I started blogging

 I have been blogging for about 3 years and don’t think I’ll ever quit. Blogging is now part of me. It is what I mainly do. But how did I start?

 When I was in the States I met a guy from India who had many blogs. At that time I didn’t understand the concept of blogging. He showed me some benefits of having a blog and how it brings opportunities. Since then I have always wanted to do something online related to blogs. When I finished my career in the States I came to Peru and got married. The only experience I had was teaching and therefore finding a job in that area wasn’t difficult. However I needed something else. I wanted to be able to do something special, something that with time could bloom into a business. I thought about it for many weeks and had the first idea of creating a blog with English links. Something easy, simple and more importantly, free!

 The first thing I thought about was, what am I going to blog about? Well, I had to follow my passion. I needed something which I could spend lots of time on without getting bored. I needed a topic that people were going to be interested in. In addition, I wanted something that was different. Then it is when I decided to blog about English.

 So I went to www.blogger.com and opened an account and started my first blog called http://estudiaingles.blogspot.com  It was something so small and here is where I learned how to blog. I learned by watching YouTube videos, by looking at other blogs and by trial and error. I spent a lot of time researching about different strategies to get more traffic. After a couple of months I noticed that I began to get more visitors and got really excited. I got better at designing but my blog was not mine because it was from “blogspot”. I wanted to have my own URL, my own space on the Internet.

 In all this process I had the idea of teaching English online for free in a different way. Students always told me that I had charisma, was energetic and funny and made the English classes special and memorable. I thought about that and decided to create a whole website related to this topic. I wanted to be able to give many people that had no resources or time the possibility of learning English. However I needed to learn about coding and designing in a much deeper level. It was very difficult and frustrating at first. I had no idea what I was doing but remained convinced that I had a winning business model.

 Wordpress was the platform I used with the website InglesTotal. It is a blogging programming tool which is a more complex than Blogger. It took time to start but I had a strong conviction that it was going to work out. Finally, I had my first audio lesson online after weeks of hard work. It was so exciting to get my first comment. After that it all just started to grow.

 InglesTotal is like a son to me. I have seen it grow and improve. I have also seen it suffer because of some virus attacks. I have met wonderful people and have enjoyed their comments, suggestions and attacks. Yeah, some don’t like my blog but it is only 1% of my visitors but I like to hear all of them. At this site I have a Podcast and that allows me to reach more places. I get emails from doctors, business people, children, grandparents, janitors, waiters that tell me they listen to my classes on the by, taxi, while they do exercises and it is just a fantastic feeling.

 It is difficult to please everyone but I am glad most appreciate my job. People have been so generous and kind that I have no words to express my gratitude.  It is because of the visitors and my passion for English that I continue. I have more than four blogs now and have plans of opening more. I have a greater vision but have decided to take things step by step. It has been a marvelous experience and one day I will see my complete dream come true.