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Ever since I began my literary journey, writing has pepped up life in more ways than one. With the boom in e-commerce, we bloggers and aspiring writers seem to be in demand.

While A, B & C (Amish, Bhagat and Chauhan) became published writers and made their millions, most of us earn zilch from writing. We don’t mind it at all. It gives us hope - someday, maybe... As Amishputra Tripathi says, if you are a writer, the first step towards success is rejection. It comes with the territory. Amish was rejected more than twenty times and so was J. K. Rowling. There is little point in writing, if you cannot deal with rejection.

However, being creative passionate souls, writers are suckers for some respect and appreciation. After all, we write to nourish our soul, initiate discussion and create awareness. Money? We simply love the guy who said that a good reputation is more valuable than money. That said, the way to a writer’s heart, as with most other creative souls is to serve dollops of appreciation. Then watch us slog as we strain our neck muscles and suffer from tendonitis or tenosynovitis.

On to the main course. The exciting times began with various blogging platforms organizing contests for aspiring writers. Since most of us are on-line shoppers well versed with bits and bytes, things automatically fell in place. I launch a product. You write about it. I showcase your articles. Both grab eyeballs. Win-win. And the cake is not without the icing. A slew of prizes – tablets, phones and air fares are great lures. There is something for everyone - movie tickets, books and assured gift vouchers.

So each time a new product is launched, irrespective of whether it is a split end demolisher or new cooking oil, FMCG companies jostle for our attention. They announce a blogging contest with attractive prizes. And the generous souls that we are, we oblige them by the magic of our fingers tap dancing on the keyboard. The fixation to involve the ever rising blogging community is a smart advertising strategy which serves the purpose admirably. Both ways.

If you thought that it is easy, you are as mistaken as Himesh is about his acting abilities. Imagine writing an engrossing article worth thousand words about your braids or about your nightmares with curly hair? Even as I write, my mail box tells me that twenty awesome bloggers will get a chance to test drive Tata Nano for a week (with fuel) if they write about their test drive experience. Whatever the experience, only an idiot will criticize his tryst with Tata’s bundle of joy.

Meanwhile, magazines are luring writers by announcing a ‘Reader’s only’ issue. I am not sure if this boosts magazine sales but it sure creates a buzz. Brunch (HT publication) did it. Femina is doing it. As I said, the generous souls that we are, most of us happily oblige without demanding any remuneration. The publication houses oblige us by publishing our articles. Consequently our social quotient inches up while we patiently dream of becoming Amish Loaded Tripathi.