Blog Update: Sept 2022

I’m not really sure how these posts will be formatted going forward, but I’m sure it will change some over time.

For now, I want to share some lessons learned over this first month, followed by some goals I’ve set for the blog, and finally an update on the number of visitors and dollars earned.

Lessons Learned:

Starting a blog requires a significant time investment.

I started making plans for the website back around the first week of August (about 4 weeks ago).

Since then, I’ve spent around 30+ hours per week learning, writing, building the website, learning some more, and finally went live on 8/30/22.

My primary learning vehicle has been YouTube. I ride my cycling trainer in the garage a few mornings each week and watch scores of videos about web hosting, platforms, plugins, monetization strategies, SEO, and have even dabbled in making videos for YouTube or podcasts.

All this from a guy who no one would really consider tech-savvy and is still working a full-time job during the day.

There’s certainly a level of excitement that’s served as a bit of a tailwind for my progress. I’m actually enjoying the challenge and I think I owe that to a solid idea going into the process.

I haven’t really strayed from my primary initial plan, though the order of things has shifted some from time to time.

I’m working on posts in the evenings, at my kid’s football or swimming practices, on weekends, and whenever else I can squeeze in the time.

Frankly, this is my biggest concern going forward because I’m not willing to let this project take away any significant time from the family. I just don’t need it that badly.

With all that said, if you had told me one month ago that I’d have a website up and running before the end of August, with 16 posts already written, I would have laughed in your face. So, overall, I’m pretty happy with the progress.

Starting a blog does not require a significant monetary investment.

I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve been able to accomplish for less than $100.

I paid $47.28 for one year of web hosting with domain privacy on Bluehost. After a few days of page building with Elementor, I decided to fork over $49 for the Pro edition and quickly realized it was a worthwhile expense. There are just some important time-saving features you don’t get in the free version.

So, all told, we’re only into this for $96.28. It’s reassuring to know that if this whole thing turns into an abysmal failure, we won’t have lost that much money.

I’m writing to please a computer.

I have to admit this is one I didn’t see coming, but it makes sense now.

I assumed any growth the site received would occur organically, and it will grow some that way, but so much of your success depends on making your site Google-friendly.

You see, search engines have algorithms that rank sites that share a similar topic. These search engines base this ranking system on how well a site meets a user’s actual intent or need when they conduct a search.

For example, when I google “How do I fry chicken?”, a recipe for Crispy Fired Chicken from thestayathomechef.com is the top ranking suggestion from Google.

As a result, this link probably gets clicked more than any of the options ranking below it.

The reason Google chose this site to rank highest is a combination of factors like the historical activity of the website, how often it is linked to other sites, how long visitors stay on the site, the quality of the information on the site, how well the titles and descriptions match post keywords for fried chicken, and so on.

All of these factors play into what’s known as search engine optimization or “SEO”.

When writing blog posts, it’s pretty critical that you take SEO into account. Otherwise, no one’s going to know how awesome your material is except for your mom or a few friends.

I’ve stumbled around quite a bit on this and didn’t take it very seriously at first. A few days ago I downloaded the rankmath plugin and it has more or less taught me how to format posts and pages for SEO.

I expect that I will be thankful I found this plugin over the long term.

I’m not going to allow the SEO tail to wag the blog dog, but I’ve had to learn a lot about it and will likely re-invest our first earnings into improving SEO capability for the blog.

Web design is pretty easy, but graphic design hasn’t been.

When I was in college, ages ago, Microsoft had a program that I dabbled in a bit called FrontPage.

It was a web design tool and allowed one to design a website without having to learn a bunch of complicated code, in a time when most people were designing by learning a bunch of complicated code. It gave me hope that I might one day build my own website.

But I never did.

Fast forward a couple of decades and here I am trying to build a blog of my own. Imagine my sheer pleasure when I learned about drag-and-drop page builders like Elementor.

You see, designing the site was the single biggest mental hurdle I had. I knew nothing about it.

I’d liken finding a tool that could bring this complex concept down to my level to Lewis & Clarke finding a map of the American West before their expedition of discovery.

It completely changed my outlook because I suddenly realized that it was actually possible for me to make my own website.

With that said, there are some customization features you need so you can make a site truly unique. I’m still struggling with graphic design tools to customize logos and even other projects I have in mind for the Roadmap.

Goals:

I want to avoid using gaudy ads.

Is there anything more annoying than trying to read content on a site that won’t sit still because of the stupid pop-up or banner ads that litter the screen?

I’m sure there is, but it’s still pretty dang annoying. It seems grossly inconsistent for me to request that people visit my site only to bombard them with flashy ads when they arrive.

We’re having friends over for dinner tonight. I don’t plan on printing loud posters or fliers to berate them with as they walk in the front door. Mostly because we want them to come back.

With that said, I know I can’t promise to be ad-free for very long. There’s just no other way to get to the goal of the blog cash flowing itself without some sort of marketing compensation.

I’m still working this out and it’s one of the heaviest things on my mind because I know I’m going to hate them when I see them on the site.

I am shooting for 50 quality posts by the end of 2022.

From what I can tell, one of the biggest SEO factors is the consistent posting of fresh, quality material.

Initially, I was aiming for 2 posts per week, but I’ve already been outpacing that while also building the site.

Since I have 16 posts done, I only need to write 34 over the next 4 months to reach this goal. That’s just over 2 per week, so I think I’ll smash this one.

I want to turn a profit before the end of 2022.

Obviously, this will require some sort of monetization, most likely in the form of ads.

The good news is I only need about $100 to get back onto the positive side of the ledger.

From what I’ve seen, I can expect to earn around $15 per thousand site visits and could expect in the neighborhood of 10,000-20,000 page views/month at 50+ posts.

So, I guess I’m shooting for at least $150/month in income by the end of the year.

Honestly, I’d be really happy with that and not shocked if I barely make my goal to turn a profit at all.

(I’m afraid it’s going to hurt looking back at this in a few months and seeing how naive I was.)

I’m trying to get 100 quality posts up as soon as I can.

If some is good, more is better, right?

Let’s hope so.

From what I’ve read and seen, a lot of blogs really see some of their sharpest growth around the 100 post mark.

There’s some combination of SEO and just having enough lines in the water, that many people begin seeing some exciting advancement at this point.

I’d plan on hitting this in the Spring of 2023 and probably back off to no more than 2 posts per week.

Any extra blog time at this point will be spent refining SEO and adding tools to the site to make it more useful.

I’m going to go ahead and start playing with YouTube, but not at the expense of the primary blog.

I never really intended to start a YouTube channel, but the opportunity for growth there seems to be pretty good.

From what I’ve read, SEO is a bit easier to break into on that medium. I might as well start learning the ins and outs of video so I can at least use that platform as a compliment to the blog sometime in the future. I don’t see any harm in trying it at least.

Progress:

As far as a money update goes, we can happily report $0 in income at this point against $96.28 in total expenses.

Also, at this point, my brother is the only person we’ve told about the blog.

I’m not really planning on telling people we know about it until I hit the 50-post mark.

There’s just not much to point people to until the site gets more established.

If there’s anything I’d shamelessly ask for at this point, it’s feedback. We’d like to avoid getting into habits that will be difficult to correct later, so if you have something constructive to share respectfully, we’ll be happy to consider it.

We also would love to know what you want to read or learn about. Are there any tools you’d like to see made available through the site? Finally, tell your friends and neighbors. Naturally, we love visitors, and the more the merrier.

We’ll post another update in October.