I will share with you my experience of running a blog. I run the blog Arkiana.com.
I started this blog (Arkiana.com) in May 2021 and I have since written 239 articles (As of March 24, 2023).
I wanted to find a way to share my insights on programming and Electrical & Electronics Engineering.
I was studying Electrical Engineering and I thought it will be amazing to share the things I have learned.
As time went by, I found myself gravitating toward programming and it’s no surprise that this blog has more programming posts than Electrical Engineering posts. I fell in love with programming along the way.
I had read about other bloggers, their incomes, and the benefits of running a blog, apart from the sheer generosity of sharing the things I have learned in programming and Engineering
I also wanted to earn any income I could from blogging 😂 lol because I heard that bloggers make money 😂 lol.
So in May of 2021, I bought a domain and hosting from Namecheap and installed WordPress, I worked on this website and published my first blog post Engineering in the Medical Field on May 11, 2021.
I was so excited, the thought of owning my own website, my own domain, and writing a post that the world could read was an experience inexpressible in words.
REALITY DAWNED
I was so expectant of this article I had written, I thought it was going to have views in the thousands, that it was going to be shared all over social media; lo and behold, nothing, less than nothing, no views, not even from friends or social media, nothing.
I didn’t give up, I wrote another one, then another one, and another one, and nothing still. I learned my first lesson there, it’s not going to come easy.
Reality had dawned on me that it’s not just publishing content and putting it out there, there is more to do.
There is keyword research, marketing, SEO, giving value, patience, and consistency.
TOPIC IDEAS
When I first started my blog, I thought I was going to have an infinite number of topics to write about. I had just written a few posts and I was already running out of ideas lol 😂.
I didn’t know what to write about anymore, somehow, all those insights I initially had deserted me. For this reason, I didn’t write as frequently as I did initially.
This made me evaluate my purpose for running a blog, so in early 2022, I reorganized myself to do more than I have done. I changed my approach.
GIVING VALUE
I initially thought that I can just blog whatever comes to mind, I had forgotten that I wanted to share insights that promote growth in programming and Engineering.
So, I decided to focus on giving value rather than blogging my random thoughts.
This takes more energy and effort to write one post but it’s worth it, I even noticed a change in page views after some time of giving value and doing proper keyword research.
INCOME
Another thing that I thought would miraculously head north is my income from blogging.
I thought I would start earning thousands of dollars just by writing a few blog posts. Well, it didn’t happen.
In my first 9 months of blogging, guess how much I had made . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $5.67, 😂 that’s right five dollars sixty-seven cents.
There are some people who have made a significant amount of money with blogs as old as mine, but I failed (I am to blame, I could have done much more).
I honestly did not know the right way to blog. It was terrible 😂.
RECOGNITION
I thought a few posts on my blog will bring unimaginable recognition and attention from many internet users, but it never happened,
I had forgotten that my blog is among a million blogs out there seeking your attention.
See, it’s hard to get recognition when you are just a new guy in a pool of highly experienced and talented bloggers, you won’t even appear in a google search.
Thankfully, with time, patience, and effort, some of my posts are able to show up on the first page of google results.
THIS IS ALREADY GETTING TOO LONG, I WILL SHARE MORE INSIGHTS IN MY NEXT SNIPPET.