This is an income and traffic report for a technology blog that I created. I wanted to share this to inspire those if you in the tech industry on how to get started just writing content.
I’ve started my third blog that gears specifically towards a specific technology stack. I’m not a developer by trade. I’m a program and product manager if you had to put me in a bucket/category.
I’ve started this blog post because of three reasons:
- Create an additional passive income stream to support my FIRE strategy with my husband
- An outlet for my hobby of creating things that can monetize passively online
- Sharing my knowledge of what I know in my industry
I’ve had 15 years in corporate IT. While I’m not a software developer or an engineer (I have a marketing degree), I feel like I have the experience of understanding the entirety of the business lifecycle. I figured I’d share it with the world (and remove any mention of specific companies that I worked for).
Knowledge is power, and having had the experience of using these technologies, I feel like I’m able to share my own experiences with the world. Not only that, it also allows me to jog down memory lane and share some of the wisdom I gained, thereby increasing my “authoritativeness” on the topic via my blog. Not to mention, having this site is also an amazing resume builder.
Tech Blog Income Report Reporting Strategy
Unlike my other income reports for our recipe blog, I wanted to make this blog post a little more concise (and a little less effort on my part). As the months progress, I wanted to share with you guys what I’ve done in a cleaner format. So this blog post will be updated and I’ll share with you when I update this post if you want to be notified the next time I update it:
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What I’ve Done So Far Before Creating This Blog Post
In full transparency, what I wanted to lay out is where I am currently at with this blog. This is the order in which everything was done and the tools and services I’ve used to create this blog:
- Registered the domain with DreamHost
- Created a ticket to create a WordPress blogĀ with my current subscription with BigScoots (I can have up to 10 blogs with my subscription)
- Once that was set up, I used Genesis Framework for my parent theme and Captivating them as the child theme.
- I took about 4 hours to customize the theme and downloaded a bunch of graphics from my subscription to DepositPhotos.
- I started writing a single blog post to get the juices flowing.
- I then installed the following plugins. Note that Thrive is a premium framework that I already had, and it was not purchased specifically for this blog (it was for this one you are reading).
- Akismet Anti-Spam
- Cache Enabler
- Classic Editor
- Create by Mediavine
- Genesis eNews Extended
- Insert Headers and Footers
- Pretty Links
- Thrive Apprentice
- Thrive Architect
- Thrive Headline Optimizer
- Thrive Leads
- Thrive Product Manager
- Thrive Quiz Builder
- Yoast SEO
Technology Blog Content Structure for Posts
Because my industry topic is so niche, I generally aim for 750 – 1500 words in each blog post. My blog posts are generally structured in teh following way:
- Introduction with 2-3 paragraphs
- 3 H2 headers minimum
- Summary Paragraph
- If you like this post, you might like these as well section with list of links
- Call to Action to subscribe to newsletter
- Feature image
It generally takes me about 2.5 hours to create a single blog post.
I use Notion.so to organize my ideas so that when I am ready to write, all I need to do is write!
For my blogging work, I generally separate my tasks into a few different buckets:
- Ideation
- Content Creation
- Analytics and Measurement
I try to spend most of my time in the middle portion.
Keyword Research
The keyword research strategy that I’m using is literally using Google Alphabet soup method, and looking to see if the content that appears is Reddit, Stackoverflow, or Quora, and if it’s any of those, I definitely write about it.
Month by Month Break Down for Blog Posts and Income Report
In this section, I break down how much content I created that month as well as a breakdown in pageviews I received per month.
January 2020
- Just started the blog
- Number of Blog Posts:
- Written This Month: 1
- Total Posts: 1
- Pageviews: 4
- Sessions: 2
- Income: $0
April 2020
- Got some motivation to crank out content
- Number of Blog Posts:
- Written This Month: 13
- Total Posts: 14
- Pageviews: 410
- Sessions: 53
- Income: $0
May 2020
- Got some more motivation to crank out content
- Number of Blog Posts: 2
- Written This Month: 2
- Total Posts: 16
- Pageviews: 96
- Sessions: 21
- Income: $0
June 2020
- I got lazy with blogging
- Number of Blog Posts:
- Written This Month: 1
- Total Posts: 17
- Pageviews: 42
- Sessions: 16
- Income: $0
November 2020
I have not made a single dollar on this blog. I’ve actually lost money due to the hosting and time investment (but it negates it because I have other blogs that I use the same services for that I pay upfront anyway).
- Got more motivation this month
- Number of Blog Posts:
- Written This Month: 9
- Total Posts: 26
- Pageviews: 416
- Sessions: 247
- Income: $0
December 2020
- Tried to crank out at least one post a week.
- Number of Blog Posts:
- Written This Month: 5
- Total Posts: 31
- Pageviews: 1,031
- Sessions: 502
- Income: $0
January 2021
- Cranked out a post once a week
- Number of Blog posts:
- Written This Month: 4
- Total posts: 36
- Pageviews: 1,559
- Sessions: 599
- Income: $0
January 2021
- Cranked out a post once a week
- Number of Blog posts:
- Written This Month: 3
- Total posts: 39
- Pageviews: 1,556
- Sessions: 610
- Income: $0
Niche Review
This technology niche seems really specialized, but I can see it growing in the future as we get more companies using this technology. Compared to the food blog analytics, month 6 i had 31 blog posts and 5,300+ pageviews.
I’ve been a lot slower creating content for this blog, which may have stifled my productivity for this site.
End of Year Goals
For 2021, my goal is to produce 50 pieces of content so that the blog can continue to rank.
Benefits of Blogging (other than money)
I mentioned three big goals I have in terms of what I want to accomplish with it. I wanted to break it down other benefits so you guys can understand that it’s not JUST about the money. There are so many other benefits from blogging, and I wanted to share a few of them that I have personally experienced myself:
- You become an expert in your field because you wrote about it and people can see you as an authority in the topic
- You learn an entire business lifecycle from creating a blog – from ideation, to development, to maintenance and support
- You learn online marketing
- You complete research on a topic that you enjoy (and grow in that process)
- You build a sense of community around your topic and with the content creator circle
Summary
I hope this breakdown of my strategy helps you in some way. Take bits and pieces of it to help motivate you on your own journey.