Now Reading ...It’s a new wisdom for me. I happen to cook for the last two weekends and I felt something close between blogging and cooking. I actually do some research while cooking, and this post is the fruit of the research. Have fun reading!
Rules to Cook a great Food
To cook a great food, you will need to follow the following step-by-step rules:
Preparation Phase:
- Secret Recipe
- Vegetables & Ingredients
- Tools
- Seasoning
- Special Seasoning
Working Phase:
- Follow the Recipe
- Make a good use of Tools
- Combining Vegetables and General Seasoning + Special Seasoning
- Watch the fire
- Watch the time
Ending Phase
- Adding more extra ingredient
- Or put it to the plate and end it that way
- More finishing tricks according to the chef skills
According to myself (as an amateur chef), cooking has 3 phases. First is the preparation phase which we will prepare anything before switching the fire on. Second phase is the working phase which we will show-off all our skills and intelligence to make the food edible and tasty. Last one is the finishing phase, which we will do it according to 2 general styles, Messy or Artistic.
So, what is the connection between cooking and blogging?? 
Well, please don’t confuse. I will tell you the similarity on both of them below.
Let’s start with:
Preparation Phase
First of all, before we step our first step into the blog-o-sphere with our blog, the ultimate secret to success is to have the proper Preparation steps.
You will also need a ‘Secret Recipes’ to be your guidance to blogging. The Secret Recipes in blogging can be in a form of :
- e-books
- e-course
- motivation
- marketing tactics
- fool-proof strategies
- Art of making post, or something similar.
It will be easier (but not easy) if you have a sufficient ’secret recipes’ (or you can call it secret weapons, or anything else that suit you) to support your blogging journey.
Below are some ’secret recipes’ that available for you to grab or buy:
BlogMastermind, the masterpiece of Yaro Starak. He will share you his ’secret recipes’ to earn $5000 monthly with daily investment of $2.57 + 2hours work + your efforts to learn and practice.
Aaron Wall’s SEO tips and tricks. It’s the ultimate secret recipes to SEO tastiest food. Learn how to optimize your content excellently and score higher in the SERP.
Masterpiece of Ken Evoy. Although it’s a classic book, the method good enough to blow you away. It is to about recognizing the “reality” of Search engine and link popularity.
(Some affiliate links)
We also need a vegetable, cooking tools, general seasoning, and some special seasoning to make a perfect edible and tasty food.
Vegetables in blogging is your blogs. Cooking tools are parts of your blog decoration, brainstorming and researching tools which could increase your blog performance and visibility.
I have highlighted some tools in my older posts. If you wish, you could find out using the following links:
Since the R.I.P. of Overture’s Search Suggestion tool, many peoples run around like a chicken without head to search for alternative tools. As per my recommendation, below tools may become the best alternative to Overture:
- Keyword Discovery (Register for free-trial)
- Wordtracker (Free)
- ClickAdEqualizer (paid service - aff)
How about seasoning? I hook up Seasoning with our blog posts. No food without seasoning is good and tasty in your tongue. Same for your blog, no blog is interesting without a regular interesting posts.
For a certain period of time, a special seasoning is needed to add to the food to create a special sensation.
Special seasoning is the “pillar articles” of your blog. Without a pillar articles, your blog will look boring, or pale, or no color of you being the expert in your niche.
Working Phase
Following the recipe means to do or take action on every advises from the expert that you’d ever get and test the advise itself whether it’s useful for you on not. Not every advises will bring the same result. It’s depend on your approaches toward your own goals.
Too many peoples that I have seen (including me) who bought a pile of expert advises e-books but never tried them all or just ‘love to buy’ e-books but never learn from it. It’s wasting money, and waste of your time (I’m one of them before 
). You can’t blame anyone if you are not a good learner.
Make a good use of tools is also important in blogging. Track your keyword focus or research for lucrative keyword is as important as selecting the right vegetables to cook with.
Rotten Vegetable = Highly Saturated market
Fresh Vegetable = Lucrative market
Who would eat a food that cooked with a rotten vegetables?!
Next step is the time to put everything, the vegetables and ingredient, seasoning and special special seasoning into the frying pan according to the “secret recipe” from your expert.
You will combine the blog posts and pillar articles together and blog it with the rules of expert. After some period of time, you will be able to taste the result of your hard work (cooking is a hard work, you know?) and feeling amazing toward your achievement.
Ending Phase
This phase could be vary across every recipe. There are so many finishing tricks that you couldn’t count with your hands. Every Expert Chef would have their own style of finishing the food that they are cooking at. Like adding more ingredients, or do a ‘food artistic arrangement’, or anything that the chef could think of.
Blogging is also the same. After you have generate some huge amount of readership, good statistics or popularity, you could continue to develop your blog to the higher degree. There is always a higher level for you to chase. The blog activity circle will not end, except you wish to end it.
People will try to develop or end it according to their needs. You will automatically get to know the ending when you have successfully walking through the Phases. So I couldn’t tell exactly what is your needs and your passion that have been multifold by the Phase of Blogging and what is your decision toward your blog.
Cooking is fun. As true as Blogging is fun. So, don’t make blogging as a source of you stressfulness media because you can’t maintain to blog regularly. Make Blogging as something enjoyable, and you will enjoy your life.
Don’t agree with me? Have extra opinions, objections? Show me your comments! I’d love to hear your feedback.
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Leave a comment
(September 25, 2007, 2:26 am)
very good analogy! yes, given the opportunity, great cooks will really make great bloggers. personally, i like cooking, writing and blogging.
Reply to proud mom(September 25, 2007, 8:09 am)
Hi, proud mom. Thanks for your support. Yup. I found a close similarity between cooking and blogging. May be I should make target some niche in cooking market!
Reply to Ken Xu(September 25, 2007, 6:17 am)
Very good interpretation and analogy. I’m not much into cooking though..
Reply to Nirmal(September 25, 2007, 8:12 am)
Thanks Nirmal. Cooking is as fun as blogging. You should try to cook some meal with your blogging secret recipe!
Reply to Ken Xu(September 25, 2007, 12:33 pm)
Hey ken, nice observation
I think blogging can be related to anything which you do with passion. Pick up anything..everything needs lot of work, thinking, strategy…be it sports, cooking, studying and what not….isn’t it
Reply to ReviewSaurus(September 25, 2007, 2:40 pm)
Really? Never thought about it before.
oh, that the experience from a pro-blogger i think? 
Reply to Ken XuI got this inspiration from my 2 weekend cooking activities. So, it’s kind of fun to see how two of them seems to have a similarity.
(September 28, 2007, 1:23 pm)
If you follow Recipe you will only be a mediocre cook but if you create Recipe then you are the chef who own that Recipe.
Likewise if you follow all these :
” * e-books
* e-course
* motivation
* marketing tactics
* fool-proof strategies
* Art of making post, or something similar.”
you are replicating what others do.
I am an eccentric cook, I never follow recipe, it can be a bad and disaster because I can never have the same kind of recipe I had before :).
All the steps , strategies that you have listed are good but I still think having your style and create your own trend that no one has is the key to invention :):).
Reply to jamy(September 29, 2007, 2:48 am)
It’s true Jamy. Again, you come to me with a great idea of yours! THanks a lot to enlightened me.
But, those are the first serve of the menu only. We will need to have so many dishes on the table. Including self innovation one
Don’t worry. You will see something big when I have finish my 3 month contract jobs.
Update: I got one quote to illustrated my idea:
Reply to Ken Xu.
look to the master,
follow the master,
walk with the master,
see through the master,
become the master.
.
(October 1, 2007, 6:30 am)
Wow…cooking = blogging. I was curious to find out more of what you have to say but ended up reading a long post of ingredients needed for a successful display of a dish (blog/site).. haha. You really got me there but overall it’s a good guideline for those new people out there.
As Jamy has put it, we have our own recipe and different style of presenting our “dish”. I do cook too and I do not always refer to recipes to come out with my dishes. I innovate or create whatever I could get hold of and hola I come out with my version of the so called dish. This is my own recipe (identity) and it indeed did impress quite a few people.
If you put in in a blogger’s way:
1) WYSIWYG - using the available resources to come out with the best end product + identifying the key items (keywords) for an dish (article)
2) Cooking Skill - Experiencing without fearing failures to get a good result. In short, knowledge and hands on are equally important here.
3) Presentation - The ability to do researches and attend certain skill development courses for self improvement and thus applying it to our daily lives.
Interesting right? Good post here and keep it up. I shall be back for more since my internet connection is running smoother now compared to 2 months ago. See ya around dude!
Reply to Criz Lai(October 1, 2007, 12:18 pm)
Hi, Criz! It’s been a long time! How are you? Thanks for stopping by. Btw, this post is intended for beginner, actually. I believe in one thing, If you don’t ever read other’s recipe, how can you make your own recipe?
It’s all back to the core basic. If we have no basic, it’s impossible for us to make an advance recipe because we don’t even know how is the smell of onions.
You have a nice recipe of success, btw. I love your WYSIWYG point. It’s very creative and insightful for me. Thanks for the contribution, Criz!
Reply to Ken Xu(February 25, 2008, 3:04 pm)
Good post. You make some great points that most people do not fully understand.
“Cooking is fun. As true as Blogging is fun. So, don’t make blogging as a source of you stressfulness media because you can’t maintain to blog regularly. Make Blogging as something enjoyable, and you will enjoy your life. :)”
I like how you explained that. Very helpful. Thanks.
Reply to chiz