Everything you need to know to become a Motorcycle Blogger

When I wrote about the sorry state of our automotive websites, I also implored people to start sharing their own stories. God knows there are a billion talented, witty, awesome writers out there who aren’t doing shit because they are either too lazy, too busy, or too gagged up with the giant corporate dick up their throats.

Today I’ll share with you EVERYTHING I know about the whole Motorcycle Blogger business. I’m by no means an expert on this, but then again nobody is. All I can tell you are my experiences, my methods, my suggestions, rest it’s totally up to you to decide how you want to let the shit hit the fan. If you have any questions, ask. 

How to begin:

1. Get a motorcycle: Well, yeah, that’s kinda important. You can obviously start uploading dick farts on your website without actually experiencing anything, but then that would put the Autocar folks out of a job. It doesn’t matter if you own a TVS Heavy Duty Super XL or a Busa, all that matters is attitude.

It’s also obviously important that you actually ride the little prick. Owning a bike and then using it only on weekends is like having a hot wife and only licking her armpits. Get riding gear, get riding luggage, test it all, sell it, buy something new and carry on. The point is that if you want to write about anything, feel it first.

2. Get a website: There are 2 ways to start your website, the free way and the paid way.

• Free website: Create one on WordPress or Tumbler or Medium or Blogger or whatever else there is. You don’t need to worry about ANYTHING except writing. It’s the perfect way to start your creativity, but gets real boring real fast. If you have even the remotest feeling that you’ll someday want to write more seriously, don’t get a free website.
• Paid website: Here you buy a domain name, hosting, and then manage it all on your own. You have to worry about downtimes, renewing your contracts, and a whole lot of other crap. If Free Website is like living in a rented house, Paid is like buying your own 1RK. It may be tiny and weird and needy, but it’s your own.

To buy a domain name you’ll need to spend from 200 to 100,000,0000 bucks, depending on how snazzy you want it to be. Names don’t matter, just try to keep them short. Hosting costs roughly 3500 bucks for the first year, and then around 7000 for each subsequent one. It may sound like a lot, but it’s actually just 500 rupees a month, or about a Milkshake a day.

After trying out a host of different options, I would strongly suggest setting up your own site with WordPress, it’s just brilliant in every way. It’s kinda like Android, everything is intuitive, you get a lot of free apps, and it has that hip, young feel about the whole experience. Blogger sucks ass.

3. Get English: You don’t need to use big words to sound cool. In fact, whenever I read one of these articles that look like they were written by a dictionary trapped in a man’s body, I just want to strangle them with their own intestines. For example, here’s a line from the above linked post:

“The word seems to have spread wide and far, and I curiously observe a multitude of mortals from various blocks of our huge housing society visit and appreciate this splendid exponent of automotive art.  It’s the sheer power of the white convertible’s visual magnetism, its consummate charisma which is pulling those curious eyes in throngs.”

What he could’ve just said:

“Nice car.”

Do you see my point? You don’t need to be a fucking spelling bee champ to start blogging, but you do need to get your basic grammar and spellings correct. It’s a nightmare to read stuff with mistakes, so don’t do that. Take your time, learn to channel your thoughts into words, and get on with it.

How to continue:

Starting is easy, sustaining is not. I know SO many little cunts who spent a bomb on getting their website setup to only abandon the whole thing within a month. Here’s what helps me to keep going:

1. Have fun: You can’t continue doing something over and over again if you don’t enjoy it. Sooner or later you’ll say fuck it and just flush your balls down the toilet. Do whatever makes you happy, no matter how disgusting, offensive, or unnatural it may be.

If you don’t like to read your own articles, you should probably kill yourself. 

Love what you do, enjoy it. Don’t listen to anybody. The only way you’ll be able to continue this madness is if you are ready to piss some people off. You’ll lose some friends, your dad will probably disown you, but hey! It’s all for a good cause.

2. Be unique: There are PLENTY of sad motherfuckers out there who are uploading the same hot jizz on their websites everyday as everybody else is. Don’t follow the crowd, find your own style and then stick with it. It’s extremely easy to just copy-paste stuff and produce daily content diarrhea. Leave that to the professionals.

Everybody is weird in their own way, use it to your advantage. Even though I never imagined life would turn out this way, I’ve now kinda become the Kanye West of the motorcycling world. Everybody seems unhappy with me, and no matter what I try, all I end up doing is make things worse. I’m still waiting on the part where I become famous and get lots of money though.

3. Don’t quit your job: I know I know I shouldn’t be saying this, since I kinda just did that. The thing is, I’ve been writing for many years, and I’ve been working in IT since many years too, and I just couldn’t continue doing the second thing without lobotomizing myself. I’m stupid anyway, and I’m trying some stupid shit to see how bad things can possibly get. If you are just starting, that won’t be a good idea.

Write part-time, kindle it as your passion. Keep it as something that gives meaning to the daily rim job that you give to your manager. Your salary will pay for your shenanigans, and it’ll give you the freedom to find your creative self. There’ll always be a time when you’ll feel like converting your passion into your job, but it’s not now.

4. Don’t have any rules: Things will not be easy. You’ll be spending a lot of your time in doing stuff that’ll not impress anybody. Most of the feedback you’ll get will make you wish you never emerged from your mom’s cervix. In all of this stupidity, burdening yourself with silly rules isn’t going to help things at all.

Have an open mind, experiment. I have tried a lot of things, like hiring others, paying for advertisement, and weed. You could have your own ideas, your own innovations. Don’t be afraid to try, nobody gives a pig’s ass anyway. Whatever makes you happy and helps you sleep with a boner at night is awesome.

How much money will you make?:

Short answer, NOTHING. Long answer, LOL. This is another reason why I suggest you stick with your full time job before you just can’t do it anymore. There’s no money in writing, at least not for the first 3 years. Don’t expect anything, so whatever you’ll get will be a bonus.

There are a few ways you may be able to make money off your website. Remember that you won’t be able to do any of this if you have a free blog, all of these items are only for your own, paid websites.

1. Advertisement: I have Google Adsense on this website. It’s the best and the most difficult program to get into. RiderZone gets about 1,50,000 views a month, and that translates to roughly 150 bucks a day. There are other much easier advertisement programs that you can get into, like Chitika and MadAds, but they pay almost nothing as compared to Google.
2. Free stuff: If you get into the whole reviewing business, from time to time people will send you free stuff to check out and write about. Because of my writing style, I don’t get jack shit, except from Viaterra, but depending on yours, you could have some real good time out there. Free stuff kicks ass.
3. Sponsorships: People are always ready to help you out if it helps them out. If you are even slightly famous, getting sponsorships is an easy task. Again, I obviously haven’t seen a single paisa of sponsorship till date, but I’m certain you’ll have better luck than me. Check with them Castrol folks, they seem to be blindly throwing bundles all over the place.

Don’t imagine you’ll be swimming in money with naked Latino models after writing that first article. That’s the biggest mistake most people do. In some ways, it’s actually good that writing is such a difficult job. If you don’t truly love it, there’s no possible way you’ll continue doing it for long.

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That’s it. This is all I know about what I’m doing, and I hope it helps you in starting your own thing. Some of you may think I’m kinda clubbing my own foot, and you maybe right. If everybody starts a blog, it would probably mean a smaller audience for me. However, the fact is that I’m simply bored. I need somebody else out there to have some fun with, somebody to get inspired by, somebody to rip the rectum out of.

A lot of Vloggers have spawned in India, people who make these pesky little videos and upload on Youtube. I don’t exactly understand why. Video editing is much harder as compared to blogging. It’s costlier too in terms of equipment and shit. So why do we have so many Vloggers but almost no bloggers? Your guess is as good as mine.

For some inspiration, check out Rohit Upadhyay’s travel blog, or Sam Kapasi’s personal blog, or Al Brad’s quest to find some freedom. Here’s another article I wrote about my blogging experience that you may like.