Blog Update 11/2/2017

Just wanted to start recording updates on a new blog that I have started. I had the idea for it initially when I was on a flight to Japan. I was reading a book called The $100 Startup and it was really inspiring.

Reading that book gave me the inspiration to start a blog about learning how to code, because I realize that that's one of my passions and it's something that has transformed my life. So I would love to be able to help other people change their lives through coding.

Right now my blog's just starting but I have the website all set up. In addition I'm posting articles on Medium and trying to get some cross traffic from there. I also started an Instagram account in July, and I've gotten about almost 600 followers so far.

Instagram has been a surprisingly good place to find other programmers and web developers. It seems like there is a community of programmers who all use Instagram and do these daily posts.

Right now my main focus is just writing a lot of content. I found that it's really easy to get distracted by social media and looking at Google Analytics, but I'm trying to keep the focus on writing as well as promoting my posts.

My process is: look up a good post topic by researching Google search results as well as AdSense results, write the post, post it on my WordPress blog, then try to promote the post on Instagram, on Medium, and also sharing it in some Facebook groups that I'm in.

So far I've gotten a decent amount of traffic from Facebook as well as Instagram, and I'm also experimenting with some other ways of reaching out and finding people who would be interested in my content.

One of my goals is to make money through this website. I've been doing a lot of research on content marketing, SEO, and internet marketing. From what I've read, the main way that people make money on the internet from a blog is to get a large email list. Getting a good email list means that you have a captive audience, if you will, who are interested in the topics you're writing about, and these are people that you can ideally help achieve some goal.

As you keep writing high quality content on your blog, you gain the trust of your readers, and instead of viewing you as someone who just wants to sell them stuff like a salesman, you become to them a trusted source of information and someone that can help them in their own lives. Once you have a list of readers who really like your stuff, then you can eventually move on, once you have about 1000 subscribers, and you can try to promote a small product to them. This could be something like an ebook, or a simple online course, or some other kind of online product

I'll eventually have to do some more research into this, but basically what you want to do is to create what's known as sales funnel, and that kind of funnels your readers from becoming just readers of your post to becoming customers. Basically you have a end product in mind that you want people to buy, and you kind of lead them through a process to show them how your product can help them.

Right now, I really need to just focus on writing good quality posts and getting better at writing. The blog is coming off to a pretty good start, and I'm encouraged by the progress, even little, that I've seen so far. I have three email subscribers, and I'm getting a small amount of traffic to my website, only I think 60 visitors in the past week.

I'm hoping that if I keep doing what I'm doing and don't stop doing stuff, that all sees more growth in the future.