I still clearly remember staying late at the office after reading this inspirational post by Scott Hanselman asking myself why not to start a new blog, I have a good knowledge in the ASP.NET stack so why not to share this with the community through writing blog posts.
So, on April 1st, 2013 I decided to establish my blog bitoftech.net and start writing, but I felt there are a lot of barriers coming in front of me and suspicious questions surrounding me such as: Am I writing about a topic that hundreds wrote about it already? Is this topic I’m going to blog about is so trivial? Who are my audience? Am I going to write for no one? And a lot of other negative questions surrounded me and I didn’t find the answer to them.
I determined to ignore all those negative questions and start writing my first two posts, I picked very simple topics and published them, I will be honest it was a terrifying feeling when I hit that Publish button for the first time! Questions pass your mind after you publish your first post, like who are going to read my posts? What readers are thinking of my skills? Am I providing the audience a value or just wasting their time reading nothing? I was happy that time with the very small number of readers which didn’t get over 50 visits per month and with no comments left! Then I stopped writing totally for six months, there was no reason to stop other than I felt it is hard to be consistent, and consistency is crucial if you want to build a successful blog.
I knew inside my self that I’m better than this, and I can commit and be consistent. I have the passion for the things I do, so in early November 2013 and while I was learning ASP.NET Web API, I decided to to share my learning experience with the community, I am a strong believer of the quote that says: “If you want to master a thing, then teach it!“. So I decided to compile a series of posts about building RESTful service using ASP.NET Web API, and from no where the ASP.NET team decided to feature my posts on their home page, I started to receive ten of thousands of visits weekly, comments were left thanking me on the detailed style of writing/teaching and how I simplify the complex technical topics.
When I started blogging I never expected that one day my posts will get featured on ASP.NET, this gave me a huge boost and motivated me to learn more, blog more, and share my knowledge with the community more. From now on I became a consistent blogger and no month passes without writing minimum 2-3 posts.
Now and after one year of consistent blogging, I look at bitoftech.net in a different way. It contains 40 posts, more than 870,000 page views, 350,000 unique visitors left more than 1,800 comments, 100,000 words have been written, and 1,100 loyal blog readers subscribed. I never expected to achieve those stats in one year of hard working!
It is a great feeling when I know that the time I’ve invested in my blog and the efforts I put in writing those blog posts or sharing the tutorials on my GitHub repository (more than 450 stars) are being used and referenced by developers all over the world, really this brings happiness and satisfaction for me! I really get excited when I receive a comment or a thank you message!
So today I’ve just received an email from Microsoft telling me that I’ve been awarded for the first time the 2015 Microsoft® MVP Award in ASP.NET/IIS 🙂
I really was not thinking about this award when I started blogging or working with the community, this award comes naturally as a recognition for all the hard work done in the past year, and I’m definitely sure that my blog is the main reason behind this award. Blogging brought many opportunities such as speaking in local events, providing consultation services and who knows maybe speaking in international conferences in the near future 🙂 I can’t wait to attend the MVP Global Summit in Redmond – USA and interact with Microsoft product groups and other MVPs from all over the world.
For anyone reading this and doesn’t know what is Microsoft MVP Award check this link.
Without you I wouldn’t achieve this!
Before I end this post I have to thank the people who really helped and inspired me during the past year:
- My wife Salma, I wouldn’t achieve this without your continuous encouragement, support, and especially being forgiving when I’m busy 😀
- Dan Wahlin I never met you in person, but you are always too kind and helpful! I want to thank you for your continuous motivation to write more and helping all the community to spread their posts and knowledge by sharing the content through your twitter account or your rich Flip Board magazines!
- Rick Anderson, your perfect and detailed blog posts are all over the internet, I envy you man 🙂 Thank you so much for always offering the help to solve technical issues I’m facing or by connecting me to Microsoft insiders when I hit something, you are great and I hope to meet you soon!
- John Sonmez, your posts are always motivational, you do a lot and a lot for the community, I learned how to be consistence from you, thank you for all the efforts you put in simpleprogrammer.com.
- Shawn Wildermuth, your are my favorite Plural Sight instructor, I watched a lot of your courses from start to end, all are great!
- Ugo Lattanzi, Filip Woj, Tugberk Ugurlu, Jon Galloway, and Dominick Baier. Thank you all for helping in answering my questions or sharing my posts!
- My freinds Emad Ashi, Ayman Afaneh, Mohamed Saleh. Thanks for your continuous help and giving me opportunities to speak in different events.
- Hande Torkan my MVP Community Program Manager. Thanks for this Award, and hopefully 2015 community contributions will be better than the previous year!
- Special thanks goes to my managers Samer Awajan, Wesam Qaqish, my friend Michael Ghantous, and my team for always believing in me! Without your encouragement I wouldn’t achieve this.
And I can’t end this without thanking you, yes you who are reading my posts to the end, who shared my previous posts, who dropped me a comment saying thanks for the efforts, or asking a question! You are the reason for inspiring me to learn more, share more, and blog more!
No one can feel the excitement and joy of blogging and sharing knowledge if s/he didn’t try it, so my recommendation to you and if you are willing to blog is to go and do it NOW, not tomorrow. Do not be shy, just start sharing your ideas with the community and I’m sure your journey will be fruitful!
If you need any help or you have doubts about starting a blog, just drop me a comment and I will be more than happy to help!
I’ve really big big dreams to achieve, I’m so thankful that 2015 started in a great way, and I’ll keep in my mind that success is an endless journey, once you are on track, you do not have to stop ever!
Happy new year my Friends!
Well done Taiseer – you earned it!
Thank you Greg, appreciate your kind words!
Happy new year Taiseer! Congratulations with your MVP award! Thanks for sharing your knowledge, it’s very, very helpfull for me!
Thank you for you warm wishes. Always happy to help:)
Congratulations Taiseer! Very well-deserved! 🙂
Thank You Diana, appreciate your nice words 🙂
Well done Taiseer…nice journey you have there…you just made me believe that hard work really pays off eventally
Zizo, thank you so much for your warm words 🙂 wish you best of luck too!
Congratulations Taiseer 😀 wish all your dreams come true!
Thank you Rawan, wish you best of luck too 🙂
Congratulations!
Thanks Ben 🙂
Congratulations on the MVP 🙂
Always have the strength to stay on your path… 🙂
And thank you for the knowledge you’re sharing 🙂
Thank you Pawel for your warm words, always happy to help and share 🙂
Congratulations for your MVP Award Taiseer. You really disserved it. Sure will keep following your posts as usual, as each and everyone is concise, up to date informative and always a pleasure to read.
Thank you Denys, you are one of my blog authentic readers, I’ll do my best to keep sharing quality content.
Congrats! Your posts have been very helpful and you deserve the MVP award.
Thank you Brian, really appreciate it 🙂
Congratulations Taiseer, you earned it!
Your blog is a great source of informations and I thank you for your hard work and for sharing it, you helped me many many times…
Matteo, I’m really happy to hear this, thank you so much for your kind words 🙂
Happy New Year brother, Congratulation
Akinsanya, happy new year too, and thank you 🙂
Great stuff!! This post really inspired me to start writing blogs asap which i am delaying from long time with same reasons you also mentioned in your post.I have questions like
1.Do I really need my website for blog.If yes,than how I can start ?
2.For asp.net,web development blogs where one can get good coverage and constructive feedback?
Thanks in advance!!
Happy to hear this, just start and do it, responding to your questions,
1- sure you need your personal website, I’m using wordpress.org as my blogging platform and it is great so far, if you want to start quickly then you can join wordpress.com but buy a domain from the begging, you can read some differences between wordpress.org and wordpress.com here
2 – ASP.NET site and the documentation and tutorials there are great, I like code project too. The internet is full with great tutorials and samples, and I recommend you to subscribe with plural sight, it is great and full of high quality content.
Good luck in your journey 🙂
Well deserved!! Congratulations!!
Congratulations Taiseer, well done for the courage to persevere writing blog posts.
Thanks Andrew, wish you best of luck too.
Happy new Year congrats 😀
Congrats from lima Perú 😉
Thanks Luis 🙂
Congratulations Taiseer! You deserve it.
Happy new year! Wish all your dreams come true!
Ohhh Rajeev my Friend 🙂 Thank you so much for your kind wishes, best of luck for you too.
Congratulation Taiseer. You deserved it 🙂
Thank you, appreciate your warm words!
That’s awesome! Keep up the good work. Hopefully I can report the same thing by next year.
You are welcome, hopefully you will hit it. Check my interview with John Sonmez here
I have never seen anyone here in the U.S.A replying to each and every question that a user ask as comments or through emails. You take so much effort in that and you deserve a double MVP !
Thank you Raj for your sweet comment 🙂 Well I like to help people ^_^ as well some of those questions are challenging for me, so I search for an answer and I learn from it too.
Taiseer поздравляю тебя с успехом в профессиональной деятельности
Спасибо вам большое за ваши добрые пожелания, я счастлив получим от комментария от вас, надеюсь, что вы, имеющие большое время с Машей 🙂
Congratulations!
Thank you Mostafa 🙂
Whao congrats man! You’ve always been an MVP ever since I studied your blogs on Angular.js and RESTful back end. Keep up the awesome job
Thanks Uchman for your warm words, appreciate it.
Well Done Taiseer,Congratulation !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks Santosh for your message 🙂
It is inspiring for me who has just started blogging and having very low page hits. But i will work hard to achieve this. here is my blog: https://neelbhatt40.wordpress.com/
Wish you best of luck, recommend you to buy a domain name 😉
Yes, thanks alot. I Will buy after having some better money and job 😉 Keep up the good work!
Thank you Moataz 🙂
I am pleased that I observed ths web blog,
precisely the right info that I was looking for!