My blog as a business?

I am quite the idiot when it comes to IT stuff.

Friends have given up asking me to use Excel and Powerpoint. At one point, I thought Excel meant to do well at work and Powerpoint was some special power which magic users had in Dungeons and Dragons.

Talk to me about Cloud and I will tell you it is all about dew point and ADLR which stands for adiabatic lapse rate. Hey, I could sound Greek too, you know, but just from a different corner of the island.

Actually, I have been reprimanded by a fellow blogger before for not becoming IT savvy. I am sure he means well and I do see why he thought I was not doing enough. 

Hey, I even gave up Facebooking after a few months but I only started a Facebook account because a friend told me my blog should have one. I didn't do it voluntarily.

To me, isn't having a blog good enough to reach out to people? Apparently, it isn't! 

Oh my goodness, it is just too much for my Jurassic Age brain to process. Woe is me.

A meeting over the weekend with someone whom I later found out to be an internet marketing guru set me thinking about my blog. 

I was impressed when I found out how he harnessed the power of the internet and made very good money. 

Passive income, I thought. No, he said, not passive. It is still a business that has to be maintained.

Oh dear. That sounds like work to indolent me.

I did some reading on internet marketing over the weekend and I am still quite lost. I mean I have ads in my blog and I also recommend some value for money deals in my blog. So, I guess these are considered internet marketing too, right? 

Then, why don't I make big money from blogging?

Of course, anyone who has followed my blog for a while would know that, for me, blogging was something that happened not by design. 

I started this blog out of boredom and curiosity. 

Any internet marketer would look at my blog's URL and shake his head. Too long. Too hard to remember.

Over the years, I just kept blogging and sharing my ideas. If I made some pocket money from blogging, I was happy but it was, obviously, not a major consideration despite what some people might think and say.

Now that I have been offered a peek into what I might be able to do with my blog, one question is, of course, how do I go about doing it? 

Another question is whether I want to do it?

Truthfully, I am more interested in learning about how to do it than to be actually doing it. After all, it could be something I might be able to do in future. 

A retirement pursuit? Maybe.

In a way, being really passionate about blogging without any overarching need for monetary rewards could have been a good thing because over the last few years, just doing what I enjoy doing, without any plan for branding, I found that I have established a brand. 

What do I mean?

If we were to Google "ASSI" or "AK" or "ASSI AK", my blog would appear at the top of the search results! 

It is true! Go ahead and try it.

I have known this for some time but the significance of it did not hit home until very recently. It is both exciting and scary. 

I am an anonymous public figure! 

I am an oxymoron! 

How is that for wow factor?

Anonymous public figure.

Any marketing person would tell us that a strong brand is an incredible asset. So, could I be sitting on an asset? 

If I could think of how to make this asset work for me, I could quit my day job and become a full time blogger like XiaXue and Mr. Brown, couldn't I?

Ahhhh... (picture Homer Simpson in a daze).

Ooooh... (nope, this is not a paid advertorial for Pizza Hut). 

Sigh... (allow me to look phased out for a while).

OK, back to reality. Hard landing. Ouch.

Anyway, I am just thinking out loud here, as always. I hope I have not offended anyone.

Blogging power!

I think I should be a fashion blogger!

I could start a trend. No?