Reality behind the Video with NDTV TV-Channel - An Interesting Story about My Blogging Journey

I started this blog as a hobby to express my photo stories, even if they are mostly only related to Travel or other related aspects such as streets, food, culture, architecture, events etc. The journey started in 2008, when I created this blog on Blogpost. Blogger is a much simpler tool to start a blog and I didn't want to spend any time on platform, plugins and hence never moved from Blogger to other platforms like Wordpress etc. Over the past 12 years, quite a few of my well wishers in fact suggested that I make such a transition, but honestly I was not sure whether I should be spending time on that. Anyway, I kept sharing my photo essays on this blog and lots of friends/family people liked the content. Continuous encouragement kept me going and I still enjoy it, although I have far less time to spend on the blog now and the frequency of various blog-related activities has gone down. 


Over a period of time, lots of brands, PR agencies and event management companies started approaching me to help them increase their reach or to market their product/services on the blog. It is a very good feeling when someone reaches to you and is also willing to pay for your time and effort. I had never thought that my blog could be such a source of income. I made a lot of mistakes in this whole process - like started posting about any random product, charging a lot compared to value this blog was adding, accepting free gifts & then tried to return the favours. Anyways, all this was a great experience but in this post I am going to share the story I have shared with many friends, when they ask how you appeared on NDTV.


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During one of the busy week-days I received a call and the lady on other side shared that her company is interested in collaborating with Travellingcamera.com. This company is launching a new smartphone in India and this phone has a brilliant camera. She told me that this company wanted me to click photographs with this phone and post them on my blog & social media channels. So she asked me to send details on her email-id around the reach of my blog, daily/monthly visitors, sources of traffic and a proposal for this campaign. Since it was a weekday, I forgot about it because of work and I had no clue what proposal I should send :).

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One weekend after this telephone call, I received another call from same person and she said, you have been chosen as one of the bloggers to work with this brand for upcoming campaign. I need to post 5 blogposts over 5 weeks & 5 posts on each social media platform. Exact calendar would be shared soon. Company would pay me some money (This amount was significant, which I had never imagined. It was a 6 figure number). I had no reason to say 'No' to this, as I was getting to explore a new Phone camera to do my favourite thing during the weekends - photography.

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Interestingly this #MobileGIRI series on blog got hit and it seems it significantly helped the brand. As the next steps, company started engaging for more products and on continuous basis. During this, I was told that I have to give a small bite in Cell-Guru show of NDTV. It was a Sunday, when I had to visit the office. 

As usual, I reached before time and realized that folks who had to meet me at NDTV Delhi office were not yet there. I went to the nearby coffee shop to spend some time and in a few minutes the VP Marketing of this company reached the venue with another lady who briefed me about features they wanted me to cover in this video. This was an interesting chat through which I learned how much planning goes behind making a professional video to market a product. The good part was that, I was not told what to say but what to cover on a broader level. The opinions were to be my own. No one tried to influence me on that. 

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Soon after we went to cafeteria of NDTV office where I met two gentlemen - one was the host of CellGuru at that time and the other an experienced photographer at NDTV. During this I also met some of my other NDTV friends - one I had met during one of the Lightroom workshops I had conducted in the past and another famous photographer of NDTV, who has been a good friend. 

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When this shoot started, we had to do a lot of takes given that I was certainly nervous and that reflects in the video as well :). During this, one of the brand representatives expressed the desire if the phone camera can be compared be with a DSLR in some way. I had to say No to this, as I didn't want to express anything which is misleading. As a blogger, you never want to make such mistakes. If there is a viewer who believes in you and your blog, it is the moral responsibility of the blogger to not provide misleading details. I know brand team was little disappointed but they understood my viewpoint later on. 

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That's how this NDTV interview happened, but it didn't stop here. After that I worked with this brand for numerous products and campaigns, wherein I also got chance to share stage with some of the popular Bollywood personalities. More than money, all these experiences have been very fulfilling for me. 

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Later on I also got to know that lady who had called me first time was an employee of famous Wizcraft and she had done great research on my blog. Even I didn't know that much about my blog. I am not joking. She shared some amazing statistics about my blog which I never cared about. That was eye opener. 

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From here, I got many chances to appear in such interviews/videos. At times, I also thought of creating my own video series but could never convince myself that I can do a good job at it in a sustainable way. I am posting some videos here, if you are interested.  

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Apart from shooting this video with NDTV, I made good connections with people during this whole journey. Till date I am connected with these people and also collaborated with them after this campaign. Blogging helped me connect with various people from different walks of life and that experience is really the most amazing part of my journey.