Tag: blogging

I frequently get the questions why I’m not monetizing my blog, if I have plans for it, and if someone wants to make money from blogging what should they do.

I am not an expert in making money from blogging. I am not placing ads on this blog and not planning to. This blog is a space I own (I want to emphasize “i own” as it is not controlled by the social media or the blogging platforms overlords) that allows me to connect to the world and interact with people. It is not for commercial purpose and not planning to be. That’s why I don’t care about the number of readers, and I don’t do more of the things I can do to increase readership such as blogging about the same topic regularly or polish things more to invite you to share posts and subscribe to the newsletter.

If you want to make money blogging you should do different things from what I do. Here I talk about everything. Technology, philosophy, travel, and more. This makes this blog too personal, which means the regular audience read it because of myself. Sometimes I write good pieces that spread beyond the regular audience and introduce new people to my ideas. But most of the time this isn’t the case.

To make money from blogging you need to build a big audience. It is much harder to build such audience if you write about everything. You need to specialize. Pick an area and write about it. Then you have to be consistent and publish regularly. Over time, your blog will have gravity from the audience interested in the topic, and if you are consistent, you will become more visible. That’s when you can start monetizing. But it is not easy, and needs a lot of patience.

Many of my friends want to start blogging. They ask me where to start. I tell everyone I have a few simple rules I keep in mind when writing.

“Real Artists Ship” – Steve Jobs

The key to commit to writing is to hit the publish button. Most people don’t write out of the fear their posts won’t be liked. Here is a surprise: nobody is reading what you write, and nobody will share what you write saying they don’t like it.

There is a second reason to shipping, the only way to get better at anything is to actually do it. The more you do it, the more mistakes you make, which leads to becoming better.

“Anything you say may be used against you” – The Miranda warning

This is one of the traps I fell into multiple times. Opinions are not safe on the internet. I think before publishing any post, if my position has changed, can this post harm me in any way? If the answer is yes, I don’t publish.

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time” – Leo Tolstoy

Things take time. Don’t expect to an audience from day one. I used to focus on how many people are reading what I write. I slowly adapted the mentality of doing it for myself, and for helping others. Not having Facebook also helped.

One of the most joyful moments is when someone messages me because they benefited from something I wrote. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it is great.

Hit publish.