jacksparrow ✍️
I started working in a new job as a graduate on a technology platform. About a year in I started blogging about the technology platform and it snowballed from there, it's now the largest blog of its type in the world.

As I got more senior in my day job, I was able to blog about more advanced topics. But also, If I didn't know a topic that well, I would research the hell out of it so I could deliver a good blog post. This has a good effect on my day job as well!

jacksparrow ✍️
Bit of everything really. Originally it was purely tutorials and how-to guides. Then I started writing tips on career tips, coverings big news articles, new releases, products and features.

jacksparrow ✍️
Thank you!

I used to use loads of metrics for success e.g. if you type into Google "XYZ Blog" (XYZ being the niche I focus on), I loved seeing my blog rise over the years to the #2 spot (#1 is the actual technology companies blog). I used to try and beat my views each month which really spurred me onto write more and compete against myself. I think when I became the #1 blog in my niche, I was really proud of it and saw the potential to help a lot of people in my niche, and also make some money for myself.

Promotion at the start was social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook). I used to go around adding everyone I could to all my networks, now I've got around 25k social followers in total. I focussed on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a lot, I used to give titles to my blog posts of EXACTLY what Google suggest said. I figured if people were typing this into Google exactly, then my blog would come first, the logic kind of held out. I also used Reddit a bit.

jacksparrow ✍️
Yes indeed. I would love to do affiliate at some stage, I think there's a lot of potentials there. I do sell a premium section of the site, which is a one-off cost of $20, on reflection I wish I did do a subscription here. A lot of it is down to lack of time, I've always had a fulltime job running this thing. Now my girlfriend runs it fulltime, there's a lot more opportunity.

jacksparrow ✍️
So it's pretty straight forward, one-off cost of $20k a year, they get an email banner ad which goes out once a month to 1000's of people. Banner ad on the site rotating between 8 advertisers, and the opportunity to post promotional content. We are a bit bad at tracking clicks, but we have a WordPress plugin called Ads Pro, this handles absolutely everything, highly recommended.

jacksparrow ✍️
I started advertising in year 2 at quite a low amount per ad. At the moment we are only doing a fixed cost package, but I have tried affiliate marketing in the past. I wrote an app review for one company and agreed a cost of $50 per lead for every sign up they got (Not deal closed, just form submission to get a demo). I think I got around $1000 for this with 20 leads which was pretty good. I want to work with affiliate marketing more in the future, as getting 10% of a multiple 20k deals could be quite lucrative.

In terms of yourself, you just need to have enough traffic for people to be clicking Ads. Google Adsense is a good indicator, Google might pay you $1 per click for a high ticket item, but a sponsor might pay the equivalent of $5-10 per click.

jacksparrow ✍️
LinkedIn is about 10x more valuable to me than Twitter or Facebook. I think it's just the nature of my business. I used to post on Reddit but I found it pissed people off lol as it was too promotional.

jacksparrow ✍️
I remember when I launched it on LinkedIn & Reddit, I got all my friends to like and upvote it for a few weeks. Probably didn't do too much ,but every little helps! After that it was mainly social, and concentrating on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO was and is by far the greatest traffic contributor to the blog.

jacksparrow ✍️
I think you could be right, however there's no guarantee of money. In addition, as I work in Business-to-Business (B2B), I would have to rely on the companies to tell me what has closed out of leads I passed over. There's no real system we can use.

jacksparrow ✍️
Sure happy to! So in our industry we have a lot of people who want to boost their personal brand so they write for the blog. We do have to provide a lot of guidance and do editing, but this is ok for us in terms of reward vs time spent.

We also have a lot of companies that want to guest post to boost their profile, get back links, and act as thought leaders. This works really well for us and them. We make sure that none of it as promotional, but if they want to give a 1 sentence pitch at the end of the article this is fine.

We also have a bunch of paid guest posters where we pay 50-$300 depending on the quality and length. These still need some editing and guidance as we have a fairly high standard, but if we're paying we can be sure it's pretty good.

Hope this helps.