Filipino author shows how to blog from home

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net How do you create blog? What copyright rules should be followed? How can you ea rn from blogging? Blogger and editor of Digital Filipino Janette Toral hopes to answer these questions in her late st book "Blogging from Home," which she launched at the recent Internet and Mob ile Marketing Association of the Philippines Summit in Makati City. Toral, who has been blogging for the last five years, said that she has been th inking of coming out with a book on blogging since 2006 but realized she needed to understand the blogging community more in particular its dynamics. "I hope to share how [people] could make a presence in the blogosphere and perh aps earn a little, without having to be so gung ho," Toral said in an interview . Watch this video interview with Toral. The book is, however, only taking into consideration blogging trends in the Phi lippines because, as Toral stressed, she would not want to sound like a true ex pert in the subject of blogging. On the other hand, she said she will have to market the book in Australia and t he US, specifically targeted at Filipinos abroad. Toral said the blogging community in the Philippines has grown and among the mo st popular blogs were cause-oriented. These blogs contained information that we re not easily accessible in other forms or web portals. She also referred to th e recently conducted Top Ten Emerging Influential Blogs 2008, which she organized that recognized bloggers that mattered. As it is, a growing number of Filipino Internet users are reading bloggers to g et information they want. As such, bloggers are becoming publishers themselves. "Blogging is serious business in a sense that you have to have a lot of content , and depth. It also uses multimedia. Blogs have to have authentic and unique i nformation for people to stick," she said.