Several weeks have passed since I won the BloggingGhana/InnovationGhana blogging competition and earned the right for the first time in my life to describe myself as a prize winning blogger (hope to be an award winning blogger soon). I have won several prizes whilst in school but never won a competition outside of it, the main reason being, I had never really being interested in participating in any competition.
It remains a phenomenon why I took part in this particular competition. I have thought of several reasons but the top two reasons are: 1. I wanted to 'belong' to the BloggingGhana family and 2. I needed the prize money. Luckily, with God on my side (a revised phrase the late Prof. Mills loved to use), I won. I was really proud of myself for 'beating' all those who participated and those who never got the courage/interest to take part.
In Shaa Allah, in this post I hope to tell you what I spent the prize money on, but before I do, let me tell you my history with blogging and BloggingGhana.
I got really interested in blogging because I thought I could make a lot of money to support myself with whilst I was in school, the University of Cape Coast and created my first blogspot blog in 2009 (till date I have not received my first adsense cheque). Due to my heightened interest at that time, I researched and gathered a lot of information about blogging. I realized some countries had a strong blogging community something we here in Ghana lacked. I then thought about starting something similar to BloggingGhana and as I did more research, I came across GhanaBlogging and that's where the love story begun.
I registered my blog and got a GhanaBlogging badge for it. In 2010, I was blogging often and normally about politics and sometimes about campus stuff. At that time, I was reading from David Ajao's blog, Ato Kwamena Dadzie's blog and a few other blogspot blogs. I was more serious about blogging than my academics in that period.
Then something happened, I don't know what and I lost interest in blogging (I guess because the easy money wasn't coming). I did write occasionally but the spirit was gone. Somewhere in 2012/13, I saw advertisements of the BlogCamp Awards and whoosh I remembered I had a writing family I had to go back to. Since then I was looking for ways to make an entry back into the family and then in September or October of 2013, now a trainee at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), a BloGh meeting was just a door away. I attended that meeting and that was where I re-activated my relationship with BloggingGhana which had grown bigger since I last fell in love with it.
I met new faces (as if I knew any member back then) and sharp, smart brains. I realized soon enough that in order to belong again to this family I needed to do/show something extraordinary. A month later the InnovationGhana competition organized by BloggingGhana was posted and I took part and won. That was brave of me, don't you agree? Now, to how I spent the money.
The prize money for the competition was GHC 300. I wish it was more but half a loaf they say ... The competition required you had some interactions in the form of comments on your blog post. I engaged my facebook friends and colleague trainees at MEST to garner the interactions. The response was overwhelming. I got over 20 comments and over 60 facebook likes in a few days. As an appreciation to these colleagues, I gave them 1/6 of the prize money (I am forcing you to do some Maths here).
I used the remaining 5/6 in addition to some money I had saved to buy a smart phone. Hitherto, I was using an RLG r7 dual SIM phone (hope you know the type of phone I'm talking about?). Interestingly, at the December BloGh meetup at iSpace, Osu, I was captured in a photo tweeting from the new phone.
Now, I am a tweep thanks to BloggingGhana and I am trying to gain some following (check me out @poeticabdul). This is my story. This is how I transformed from a new BloggingGhana member to a Prize Winning Blogger.
I currently write more tech and business articles at OpinionGhana.com (@OpinionGhana). Do show me some love.
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