Starting a blog? Anyone here has any

Does anyone here have their own blog?
What do you talk about?
What blogging service do you use?
Are you making any money?
What does it take to monetize your blog?

Seems like everyone and their cats have blogs these days and are making money, just curious on what it would take.

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Comments

Iristheangel

I have a blog. It's pretty popular and has helped my career out a bit. I have over 100K unique users a year and over 300K hits/year. I try to talk about whatever I'm labbing, studying, etc and try to break out complex topics as easily as I can so people of all levels can configure the same things I am.

As far as what service I'm using, I'm using Squarespace since it's easy. I started sticking adsense on there and probably make about $100/month off it. Not much but it pays for my crazy tshirt fund

More than just advertising bucks, I get name recognition - a LOT of people at conferences walk up to me and say they've seen my blog - and one day when I write a course and sell it, people will probably buy it just knowing my style of teaching from my blog.

ccie14023

Yes, I've had one for a long time. Most of my readership consists of car insurance spambots. I have a hosted arrangement with Wordpress. I wouldn't recommend doing that, since the maintenance is a pain, and if you don't maintain it you get hacked pretty quickly. The hosting provider does some upgrades but I'm responsible for the plug ins. It's also started running slow lately and I don't have time to troubleshoot. I certainly don't have the profile of "Iris" but then again, most of my posts are less useful than hers. I'm also pretty slow to post. And I don't spend a lot of time sharing them on social media. Anyhow, her approach with SquareSpace is a better one. At the time I started mine this seemed like the best way.

Those things said, I would agree with her that it can be useful. The blog certainly helped me to get my current job in technical marketing because it allowed my hiring manager to see how I write, how I explain technical concepts, and just to get a sense of my personality. I had a few entries explaining weird Juniper stuff like inet.3 and he liked that. I can tell you as a hiring manager myself, if someone links a blog in their resume or LinkedIn profile, it's a guarantee I will read it carefully.

As for monetization, I don't bother. I do it for personal reasons. In fact, since it's hosted, I pay for it. However, Iristheangel's post it making me reconsider. I don't think I'd get her volume of traffic but if I even made a small amount, hey why not...

PC509

I have a blog... I've been neglecting it lately. I use a shared hosting environment and run Wordpress on it. I use it for a Microsoft focus, mainly on Windows consumer and server, but throw in some Xbox and Office and general Microsoft company news from time to time. A lot of how to's and tips and I'm working on more.

As far as monetization goes, not that much. I have a single Amazon ad on the site, and it brings in very little. I do it for fun, not for the income. But, that little bit does help every so often.

I've gotten some recognition for it both at work and from Microsoft (from Microsoft, it was one of several things). I don't really advertise it at work, but my boss stumbled on it and said he's been there several times. I had a Windows 8 keyboard shortcut guide that ended up on the corporate help pages.

gespenstern

I have a blog. Haven't updated it for 2 years...

Never bothered with visitors and promotion, don't even have google analytics installed. Still, I cover only unique topics nobody else covers, so properly constructed search queries will land you there for sure...

Like with the CCIE above, 99% of my visitors are spambots judging by comments. I guess monetizing it would be totally futile, I never been a popular personality so it's too late to attempt being one, I guess, plus, I don't enjoy writing. I have quite a few pretty unique topics/approaches nobody else in the whole world uses yet, just don't have motivation to write about it...

nisti2

I used to blog several years ago. Now I have a lot of traffic I sometimes I earn a few bucks from Adsense.
I use WordPress with several plugins.

Node Man

I keep a blog but is nearly 100% private for my own note taking.

JDMurray

Blog, yeah, I did one of those for a while. Check my sig.

blargoe

I started one years ago; I just didn't have the time and energy to keep up with it. I have a family and a busy/complex life outside of work, and at the end of the day, the name recognition that I think I could gain isn't worth it.

Didn't help that I changed companies, and the one that I went to explicitly blocked blogging platforms and social media (not that I would have been spending much if any time blogging at work, but that is where my working notes are).

I am going to start posting some of my code samples to maybe GitHub and may have some accompanying blog posts to go along with that, but that will be the extent of it.

cyberguypr

I also tried it a while back. Never had the time to keep up with it so scrapped the idea. My only advice is to go all in or not do it at all.

NetworkNewb

blargoe wrote: »

I started one years ago; I just didn't have the time and energy to keep up with it. I have a family and a busy/complex life outside of work, and at the end of the day, the name recognition that I think I could gain isn't worth it.

+1 to starting one and just not keeping up with it...

Going off topic, but just saw your avatar and its the same poster I put up in my cube a couple weeks back! Well sorta I got this water color version of it. The 18x24 one

https://www.etsy.com/listing/241944519/office-space-milton-watercolor-funny

Edit: tried clicking on my link and it sometimes go to a different page... But when I copy and paste it in it goes to the page I meant to.

thedudeabides

I've started a few, but I had trouble keeping with a specific theme. They usually ended up all over the place. Moreover, no one read my posts. I don't know how people get followers unless they start with their friends.

In the end, I ended up deleting them.

stlsmoore

I have mine in my signature, had it for a long time but I regret my name choice now. Since I work with way more vendors than just Cisco now.