Doors open and opportunities knock thanks to blogging.

The more enthusiastic of my valuable readers may have noticed that I had one of those very rare occurrences this Saturday when I didn’t make a posting.  It’s all been down to a very busy month or so which I thought might be of interest.

I know there are lots of people who wonder about the value of blogging, aside from the fun of it all and the good practice of writing itself which are all that really needs to be said.

Blogging though for a very few people can also open a few doors and in the last month this has become the case for me or at least is in danger of happening to me.

It all started a few weeks ago when I received a message from a journalist who had seen my blog which had led him to my e-book ‘How To Get Rich Using Airbnb‘.  He wanted to do a feature on Airbnb and how it is taking away visitors from hotels.  The journalist was from Bloomberg TV and before I knew it, he was round a few days later and did a 15 minute interview with me, filmed around the house which gave me the chance to do those filler shots that you see on news reports that give viewers something to watch whilst a voice-over can be heard.  Happily he not only filmed my book but will reference it on the news feature on TV and the website when it airs in January.

It was a very exciting morning and it led me to seriously overhauling, adding to and improving my kindle book in anticipation of a bit of a sales surge next year.   I can even include the subtitle “as seen on TV” on the book cover!Considering there are over 32,000 Airbnb listings just in London and the journalist was happy to come out of London to find me says a little of what he thought of my blog and book.

Then somehow I became involved with writing a TV short story treatment.  The only conditions being that it be inexpensive to film and with just one or two actors and only one location.  Having written a few speculative TV scripts before, I knew how to go about it but what to write?  Oh yes, a story based on my blog post of a few weeks earlier.

Whilst waiting to hear back from the producers, I was contacted by my blogging friend Ekaterina who informed me of a short story competition which was looking for spooky Christmassy related tales.  We both thought that my TV story could be adapted with a few tweaks and enhancements to make it suitable for the competition.

Two weeks ago as I was busy beavering away I was contacted by the BBC.  Their researcher had found my post on “Falling Out Of Love With Football” that I wrote over a year ago and they wanted me to feature on a radio panel discussing various weighty subjects connected to football including racism, FIFA corruption, IRA chanting and the situation of a well-known British footballer who had just been released from prison after serving a sentence for Rape.

I had been on the radio a few months ago but nothing like this and whats more the debate would be open to members of the public who take issue with the panelists. As it happened, after an initial stumble I did rather well and was told I came over as much as a natural as the professional journalists and football manager who I was on air with.  I was a little worried I might say something wrong especially as I was on BBC Ulster (Northern Ireland) where obviously anything to do with religion and the IRA are very heated topics.

Last weekend our home was taken over by students who had seen me online.  They spent 2.5 days making a short film adaptation of the classic children’s story “Not Now Bernard” which is about a little boy who finds a monster in his garden but his parents are far too busy to listen to him and in the end the monster eats him!   Our house was turned upside down but it was all good if tiring fun to see how a film is made close-up with the lights, cameras, microphones and actors.  I even got one of my books featured as a prop!

A few days ago I was called in to an informal meeting in London with the TV production company.  This isn’t the time to say very much about it at all but it seems my story treatment caught their eye and has been earmarked to be turned into a TV short, possibly on a network TV channel.  I was over the moon as I always wanted to write for television and we’re going to look at locations in December.  I’ve been told that they like it so much I have to write some more for them next year which is superb.

November also saw me write article for 2 magazines which found me through my blog on entirely different subjects.  Blogging can be such a useful tool above and beyond blogging for blogging’s sake.

Finally despite it now being winter, I spent the weekend giving guided tours for my company Ye Olde England Tours.  A lovely couple from Georgia, USA wanted trips to Portsmouth Historic Dockyards to see ships including HMS Victory and then a day out to Wiltshire to visit the largest stone circle in Europe, Avebury and the beautiful old village of Lacock and its Abbey/house.  It was the most stunning sunny day and they were such lovely people and I had the chance to introduce them to one of my favourite winter meals, a Steak and Ale Pie in the George Inn at Lacock.  I’m getting increasing number of inquiries and tours from people finding me through my blog.

Of course when I hear any progress with anything I mention above I will surely mention it again here.   Maybe because of this, I had my best ever sales month, especially for my 2 new WW1 related books and my blog reached its highest ever monthly total of readers in November, nearly 11,000 so thank-you everyone.

Things might quiet down for a bit so I won’t miss any more blogging and to make up for it there will be a bonus and entirely none narcissistic post very soon.

So that’s my good news for November (bad news glossed over of course), how have things been for you?  Have you found that blogging has made a difference to your life in some way?