Reasons To Start A Blog As An Expat In China

Blogging is a great way to record your daily expat grind and its highs and lows as well as keeping track of things to do and things you’ve done.

Starting a blog isn’t rocket science, but it can be obsessive, especially if you’ve just arrived in your new expat destination and would love your friends back in the home country to read about the good, the bad and the not yet discovered. Blogging is especially fascinating if it covers arrival, settling in and the process of becoming an expat in a country as fascinating as China, especially if you’re recording all your new experiences as photos.

One of the most boring parts of photography is processing and storing your images, a task made far easier if you’ve a blog on which to place them along with a suitable title or commentary. Dates of upload, titles and other details are easy to insert and make viewing your pictures far more enjoyable for those back home. Editing and cropping are also far easier and blogging about your experiences saves replying to endless emails requesting full details of your new life.

Another great way to display your understanding of Chinese history and culture to potential employers is to create a blog showing ancient glories and giving details of their importance. Skills such as writing and photography can lead to work as well as advancing your existing career. Maintaining a blog takes commitment, effort and creativity, skills found attractive by future employers. For expat writers, it’s an easy platform for displaying their talents as wordsmiths as well as helping would-be expats get to grips with what China’s all about.

Lastly, successful blogging can lead to monetisation via the daily traffic it draws. Schemes such as Google Adwords can help, although overloading a blog with ads is off-putting to readers with slow internet connections, and trialling services or products is another way to score. Maybe your blog will take off and maybe it won’t, but blogging about China can help other would-be arrivals in this fascinating country to make up their minds.