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Happy Birthday to my blog: 5 years old today!

Exactly 5 years ago I started this blog, at that time still at another location and from August 2005 at https://www.marc.cn. My first posts were links that I shared with my readers (likely just my parents at that time :-), like people now normally share them on Twitter. In October I started with more ‘normal’ blog posts, just in time for the post on October 16 about a round of golf that ends with “And as a nice thing to top if off a potentially great business idea was born during the ‘19th hole’. In case it works out you’ll read more about it here in about 3 months.” That was the Tudou.com idea of course.

Most of the posts have disappeared at the old domain, but you can still see all of them on this blog if you go to the archives of August 2005 and scroll down to the very end. And all blog posts from the first 2 years were published in the best Christmas present that I ever got.

Over the years I have gained a lot of readers, according to Google analytics this blog had about 50,000 unique readers last year. I don’t write to get more readers, but mainly to share my thoughts and also as a kind of searchable diary: a place on the web where I can always look back at how my thoughts and ideas have evolved over the years, and with memories about important events in my life.

I like writing blog posts, but it’s not a high priority for me. My work and family come first, meaning that the number of blog posts is not as high anymore as a few years ago. But I still end up with about 2-3 posts per week, although I normally have ideas for 10 articles. In case my job and family obligations will get less I will certainly start writing more. I would especially like to write more about business ideas that I have, but those posts normally take me too much time so I don’t write them.

One thing that I will likely never do, is try to earn money with this blog. I have been approached several times by companies (that I won’t name) to write something positive about them in return for either physical goods or money, but I won’t do that. I want to be independent. I also do not plan to put ads on my blog, I see it as a private venture that I do for fun, not for money.

I have no idea how long I will keep writing this blog. Will it be a lifelong thing? I really don’t know. Maybe I will get tired of writing and stop, or maybe I will get annoyed by the hate comments that I sometimes get (and moderate). Or maybe technology will change in such a way that blogs will disappear. In the past I have thought about switching to a video blog, but even though it’s much easier to record a quick video I decided to stay with the written format. But now that I think about it, maybe it’s an idea to add some video posts about business ideas that I have. We’ll see, I think it’s likely that I will still be writing here 5 years from now.

I want to thank all readers for their loyalty, I know some of you have been coming here for (almost) 5 years already. And for new readers, welcome to this blog and feel free to let me know in the comments what you think about it or if there are topics that I should cover. Contacting me directly is of course also possible, my private email address is marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com.

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  1. congrats marc.cn and to its writer. Nice to read stuff you write, some influenced me, some inspired me, some made me laugh. But never got the slightest feeling to write a hate comment. Thank you Marc for your inspirational blogs and tweets. I wish I had the time to keep up my blog. Thinking of that, I guess your live is more busy than mine so have to think how its possible that I have no time to write…;-(
    Looking forward to the 10th anniversary of your blog.

    Cheers and Ganbei a bottle of TsingTao to this blog.

    David

  2. I follow your blog now a few months and I really like it. It has so many different subjects it always suprises me and its fascinating and inspiring. Please keep it going.