365 Days of Telenovela Love

Exactly one year ago, I was inspired by my husband to ignite my telenovela passion with blogging telenovela stories. Hitherto, I was a niche blogger in many diversified areas, and was yet to find my feet then. So, entered The Gardener's Daughter (La Hija del Jardinero)!

The explosion which later spiraled my passion, converting it into a successful blogging career, was unimaginable! Having 3,000 visitors (Telenovela Lovers) per day, with a page views of 15,000-27,000 daily, is definitely not the norm in the wild, wild, web or blogosphere. What set out as a passionate hobby later began to generate a modest income as the blog was gradually monetized, all these on Blogger's free blogspot hosting. Incidentally, Blogger too marked her 8th year anniversary two days ago.

With over a quarter of a million unique visitors so far, and over 1.5 million page views in 365 days of blogging, posting about 450 stories, the Telenovela Love Garden has come of age.

This hobby has turned-in, an average blog income of five hundred U.S Dollars ($500), consistently for me since February 2007, cumulating in almost $5,000 in 12 months! For a work-at-home mom, in poverty-stricken Africa, on a free blogspot, with all its inherent limitation, this was by no means a superlative success.

That is what I called turning passion to profits. With 893 comments by telenovela lovers on the 450 posts, 272 comments on the 26 post our partner site, novelahitz, and over 2,000 comments from the C-Box, it is a proof a high interactivity by members, almost turning the blog to a social media, a community of telenovela lovers! Subscriber base by FeedBurner who accessed the love garden daily by feeds are over 2,450!

Also, we are the only growing telenovela community on MyBlogLog. We maintained our number one spot as the foremost telenovela blog in the world, published in English language. We are number three position on Google for the keyword and search term "TELENOVELA" out of 5.21 million search results! We have so much to achieve, despite these progress of the last one year.

These efforts have naturally graduated or translated to my moving up to pro blogging, by paid hosting on a new blog on Telenovela Thrillers and Love Stories. I would maintain greater presence there, with my transition to broadband internet connection in my new location in Ikeja, the hub of Lagos megacity.

I am greatly indebted to many of you fellow lovers of telenovelas for these successes recorded over the last 365 days of love encounter in this 'love garden'. Bola, Seun, Bibi, Ayo, Amina, 'Desola, Professors Olofin and Acosta-Alzuru, MamaJ, Philip, Aisha Bt, and, others too awesome to mention here in this small space. This is also your success as you were all part of sowing to make this love garden green and romantic. The sweet fragrance you have poured out here would not fade away, even as I prepare to launch with my Story-Story blog soon. Once again thank you.

My debt of appreciation also goes to my web mentors and friends, whom I have picked so many tips from, to climb to this level of modest growth. From the three "J's"- Joel Comm, John Chow and Jeremy Schoemaker. Big thanks to my sister blogger- Jane May whose depth and profoundity helped me a lot, same for my 'former blogging class-mate' in John Chow's "lecture theater", Kumiko Suzuki, who had since moved ahead of me from free Blogspot to WordPress paid hosting, earlier this year. Hope to catch up with you soon friend.