A Bangladeshi Professional Blogger With a Dream: Against All the Odds

I am Razib Ahmed, perhaps the first professional blogger from my country Bangladesh. I know that there are other Bangladeshi bloggers who used to blog much earlier than I did but they did it out of passion. I do it for money first and then passion. Don’t think that I am less passionate about the things I write about. However, I am more passionate about the income as I have to pay my bills through blogging. I joined Know More Media Blog Network (A California Based Network) on March 22 2009 and I got an award there. Because of economic recession, the network got closed on 1 August 2008 and I now work on my own blogs (including this one). I do not know of any other blogger living in Bangladesh who works for any of the big blog networks in Internet.

My Interview in 2006: http://www.blog-republic.com/?p=156

Anyway, if there are some other professional bloggers living in Dhaka, I am happy for them. It is really one of the best works in the world. I enjoy the freedom it can give. However, it needs a lot of hard work and dedication. There are many limitations that I have to face too. One of the biggest limitations is slow Internet connection. Just this simple thing (faster Internet) could really make a lot of difference in my career. However, I am not hopeful that this problem will get solved anytime soon.

Electricity is another big problem. Fortunately, in my part of Dhaka, it is much better compared to the rest of the country. I have a laptop and IPS now. That is why, these days, I don’t suffer from this problem.

I am desperately waiting for PayPal or any kind of online transaction system and I guess everyone here who is related to outsourcing is waiting for the same thing.

Life is very funny indeed. When I was in class 8 in school, I said to myself that I would never study science. Since then, I have only studied humanities. Now, all the time, I am working with a computer and Internet connection.

These days, I see that many young people are interested about earning money online. Well, there is no magic- just sheer hard work. Most of the days for the last 4 years, I have been working more than 12 hours a day. If you think that you can do that then blogging is surely the thing for you. You must have the desire to survive and succeed against all the odds. For some encouragement, you can read it: http://www.serve.com/davidchew/cgi-bin/truestory/story.cgi?fselect=story0032

Sometimes, people ask me to give some advice and tips about earning money online. The only thing I say to them is that there is no short cut in this field. If you are looking for easy money then it is not the place for you.

Fortunately, Bangladesh Government has been giving a lot of encouragement to the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. I think that blogging is a part of ITES and I wish that both Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS) and BASIS come forward to officially recognize blogging. Blogging surely has a lot of potential for Bangladesh. We just need to make sure that the right people come to this field.

For those who want to join Blogging in Bangladesh, another advice is that please do not copy paste from other websites. Quoting a part from the writings of others is perfectly OK but don’t copy the entire content. Try to know about this field. If you are not good in English language then it will be almost impossible to earn money here.

In Dhaka, I am a freelance ICT journalist and a member of BIJF. I have been writing in computer magazines since 1999 and thus, I have one decade long experience in this field. Before that, I used to write for Daily Ittefaq and Weekly Dhaka Courier.

I have a dream: may be some day, thousands of people will work in Internet in my country. Then, Bangladesh will be at per with India, China and the Philippines in outsourcing sector. I believe that we have the potential- we just need to believe in ourselves and work hard.