Friday, 19 December 2014

Stuff You Probably Don't Know About My Blog

This post is going to be something a little different. I thought I would share with you guys some stuff about my blog that nobody knows or very few people do. Maybe in this post I could answer any questions you guys have ever wondered. 

Right, let’s get into it.

I was never originally called 'The Berimbolo Kid'

I started my blog in January of this year, and for about a month my blog was called two different things. For the first week my blog was called 'Giorcardo1394', hence the URL. Basically, my name is Giordano, and my brother’s name is Riccardo. If you split those names in half, you get the name 'Giorcardo'. Also, I was born on 13/11/94, so that's where the last part comes from.  

After about a week, I came to the decision that nobody will ever remember that name, so I decided to change it to 'Giordano Lewis' Blog'. I know what you're thinking; it's a very catchy title. I remained with that for about three weeks and just before I got my first interview with Seymour Yang, I changed it to 'The Berimbolo Kid' and never really looked back. 

How did I get the name 'The Berimbolo Kid'?

This is a pretty weird story. Some of you might not know this about me, but I'm a big fan of competitive Call of Duty. Subsequently, I am subscribed to a lot of gaming YouTube channels. One pretty popular gaming YouTuber is ThatGuyWhoCamps. 

Using that name, I was going to edit it to make it relevant to me. Personally, I'm a big fan of the 50/50 guard, and I wanted to implement that in the name of my blog. So, when thinking of ideas, I came up with 'ThatGuyWhoPlays50/50' and then changed it to 'ThatKidWhoPlays50/50'. I was pretty certain that was going to be the name of my blog, but I didn't like the way it sounded, so instead I got rid of the words 'plays' and '50/50' and replaced it with 'berimbolo's'. That left me with 'ThatKidWhoBerimbolo's'. Then I simply shortened it to 'The Berimbolo Kid'. 

I never solely wanted to be a BJJ blog

I've mentioned this a few times on my blog, but when I started out, I had no initial intentions of solely being a BJJ blog. Instead I wanted my blog to not focus around any topic and I would talk about anything I pleased. I knew at some point I would talk about Jiu-Jitsu, but I definitely didn't want it to be a regular thing. 

If you look at my posts during my first month of blogging, most of the stuff I talk about is not Jiu-Jitsu related. After I got my first interview, I changed to blogging about Jiu-Jitsu full time. Every now and again I talked about other things, but for the most part I've stuck to it.

I'll tell you a kind of embarrassing story. Prior to getting my first interview, I wanted to talk about something 'current', so I looked at what was the big news in UK that day. On that day, everybody was making some big deal about how Geri Halliwell was planning on representing the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest. I figured I would write something about that as it would get a lot of traffic. If wrote about that I don’t think I would ever live it down. 

My logo is based off the Rolled Up logo


First of all, I apologise for the image not being such great quality, but you get the idea. Basically, I got myself a graphic designer and I told him what I wanted, which was a complete circle with a berimbolo being done in the center and the title of my blog on side exactly as you see it above. 

I must say that it took a while to get the one I was looking for. I'll show you all the designs we went through below in order, so the first one you'll see is the first one I was presented and the last is the logo I have now:






I hoped everybody would find me

Yeah, in the first six weeks of blogging, I never posted on social media, Reddit, forums etc. and as a result the most views a post of mine ever got was 30 views. Honestly, at the time I was very pleased with that. I simply saw it as progress. 

Basically, I hoped somebody would stumble across my blog and spread the word and if I stuck with that, I’d be lucky if one of my posts got a hundred views never mind thousands. 

Why? Well, I was just nervous about what people would say about what I was writing or my blog in general. Looking back that was a bit stupid, and luckily most of the feedback I have received has been positive and I'm glad lots of people enjoy what I write.

My brother reads every post before it's published

As I mentioned earlier, I have a twin brother, Riccardo, and he actually reads everything I write before it's published. I think it's good because I can get a second opinion on my content before anybody else see's it and if he thinks its s*** (which has happened a few times), he will tell me. He also comments on the arrangement, images used etc.  

There has also been a few times where I write something and he thinks it’s terrible and it never gets published, but that has only happened once or twice. Luckily, he likes most of the stuff I write. 

At the moment, I can't really think of anymore. If I do, I will do a follow up post in the future. Yeah, so I hope you found this post a little interesting and you learned something new about this blog. If you have any questions please let me know.

Before I wrap up this post, I’d like to say thank you for 125,000 views!

Catch you later,

Giordano

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