This piece was originally posted over here.
This is going to be a retrospective piece going over my Blogging stats and earnings in 2022. I will also include some tips based on my personal experience if you would like to consider Blogging either for a side income or as a hobby.
My strategy is pretty simple, I post my article on my wordpress blog and then cross-post it along with a canonical link on Medium, Dev.to, and Hashnode. So basically, it is the same content but it's being shown to different audience groups.
Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE)
If you would like to read more about COPE, this is a great article.
I have even written a tutorial on how to automate cross-posting to various different platforms.
Blog #1 RealPythonProject Stats
This was my first wordpress blog and I created it in the Winter of 2020. I integrated it with Ezoic on 5th January 2022 and have been using Ezoic to display ads on it ever since.
In 2022, my blog got 168,402 views.
Initially, I had some trouble integrating Ezoic with my website and hence there are a few missing data points. In the month of April, a lot of my website pages became unavailable and sometime in mid-April, my entire website went down. It was due to some issues with Bluehost, my website's hosting service. The website's speed was affected as well and most pages were taking 15-20 seconds to load. After a bit of back and forth with the Bluehost Team, I managed to resolve the issue. However, for some reason, some of my articles got taken out of Google's Search Index, and as a result, I had to apply to re-index multiple of my pieces.
In the last few months of 2022, my view started dropping significantly. There were a couple of reasons for it
- I started posting less content since I was pretty busy
- Google had a core Search Algorithm update in September and I believe this affected my blog. As a result, the views started tanking.
Blog #2 RealJavascriptProject Stats
I created this blog in the summer of 2022. It hasn't grown as much as I would have liked. That is mainly because I have not been consistent in posting articles.
I don't have Ezoic or Google Analytics setup so below is a screenshot from Jetpack Insights
In 2023, I will focus more on this blog and try monetizing it.
CrossPosting Stats
Medium
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to get yearly stats from Medium. So I'll have to sum up the views for every month. Below is a screenshot of my best month on Medium in 2022
In 2022, I got a total of 140132 views which is almost on par with my main wordpress Blog. I had started off initially on Medium and managed to gain a few hundred followers.
I have been pretty inconsistent over the past few months but still manage to get around 10k views a month. Medium does a pretty good job at promoting your articles and a lot of top search results are often Medium articles. For anyone getting started, I highly recommend Medium as your first platform.
Dev.to
Unfortunately, Dev.to doesn't support showing yearly stats as well. Below is a screenshot of my stats from last month
I used the Dev.to API to get my stats for 2022. My Dev.to posts got 11499 views in 2022.
Hashnode
Unfortunately, Hashnode has not worked out for me.
IMO, Hashnode has the best UI compared to other blogging platforms and comes with a ton of features. However, I think like me, most people use it only to cross-post their articles and hence there aren't that many readers. It is still fairly new as compared to dev.to and Medium. Or maybe I am just missing out on something. If you have managed to crack the Hashnode Algorithm and are reading this, please send me some tips.
Earnings
Now the good stuff!
Money Spent
I spent 156 USD on both my blog's domains, hosting, etc via Bluehost.
As I talked about in the previous newsletter, I spent 175 CAD on some SEO services on Fiverr.
I used Ezoic to display ads and since June I have been paying 36 USD per month to gain access to Ezoic Premium.
Total Money Spent on Blog: ~540 USD
Ezoic Ads
The drop from August'22 was due to 3 main reasons
- The biggest reason was I decided to add hard limits on the number of ads to show per page. Initially, I did not set any ad number limits and earned around 100-200 bucks per month. However, in the long term, you need to find the sweet spot between the number of ads to display and also having a good user experience. I still haven't managed to figure it out, Ezoic has some helpful tools for this as well.
- Lower views due to SEO issues
- Didn't publish much during the last few months.
Medium Partner Program
Total Earnings in 2022: 980 USD
As I mentioned earlier, I only cross-post my articles on Medium. So each article of mine earns me via ads and via medium partner programs. Medium also allows you to refer users and you get a portion of the membership payment. I earn around 25 USD a month (included in the snapshot above) from referrals.
Most of my time on Medium is spent reading other writers' work.
Guest Posts on Real Python Project
Surprisingly, a couple of people reached out to me to guest post on my blog and were willing to pay 50 USD for it. I had 4 guest posts and got 200 bucks for doing nothing other than reviewing and posting their article on my blog.
Net Income from my Blog
Total spent: 540 USD
Total earned: 2494 USD
Net Income: 1954 USD
Tips for Getting Started with Software Blogging and Making a Side Income
TLDR: Cross-posting and Posting on Sub-reddits
- Initially start by creating content on Medium and cross-posting on Dev.to/Hashnode. You will not have to deal with any SEO/Website issues and can simply focus on writing content.
- Once you have gained a few followers on any of the above platforms, consider buying a domain and publishing over there. Don't stop cross-posting on Medium and other platforms.
- Be consistent. As you saw from my stats when you stop posting, your views and earnings drop. It's hard to stay motivated and be consistent so you'll have to manage your expectations for earnings. The more consistent you are, the more you will earn.
- Shamelessly promote your articles on subreddits. Just post it and forget about it. Reddit will lead to a lot of traffic to your articles.
- Write about stuff you learned at work/school or challenges you faced at work/school. Most of my articles are about challenges I faced during my day-to-day life as a developer.
About Me
If you liked this articles, please consider supporting me by buying me a Kofi. I send monthly newsletter revealing my stats/earnings for the month. If you are interested in reading more content similar to this article, subscribe to my newsletter. Read my previous issues here.
I recently graduated with a BaSc in Computer Engineering from University of Toronto. I moved to Vancouver shortly after graduation and started working as a Software Developer at Amazon. I like to play around with new APIs/ Libraries and write about them. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter
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