Blogging for Three Months: What I've Learned and How Much I've Earned (June 2024)

First of all, I recommend you read my post titled "How Much Did I Earn in My First Month of Blogging (April 2024)" where I talk about how I started and my blogging journey, and also mention my various hobbies. I'm not saying this because I wrote it, but it's a nice and enjoyable read.

Did you really think I gave up when you saw $10 in the previous post? I have no intention of joining the graveyard of quitting writers. So why don't I stop writing? Is all this effort worth $10, is it worth sitting for hours and racking my brain? Let's start the article by finding the answer to this.

Why Do I Keep Writing?

1. I enjoy sharing my surprising experiences in life and particularly connecting with people who have similar tastes to mine, who love to read and write. When I discover a good blogger, I read many of their posts, even if it's not my area of interest. As someone who would start researching a topic in our 24-volume Meydan Larousse encyclopedia set at home and get lost from one volume to another, this is quite normal for me.
2. It's wonderful that people I meet here read and comment on my posts. Moreover, it's an invaluable pleasure to know that people who love reading as much as I do, who are selective and believe in self-improvement, are especially interested in my stories and read them. Many bloggers reading this will have experienced this firsthand.
3. In my previous post, I talked a lot about passive income. It comes as it is read, the more I write, the more it gets read, and the more it comes. A reader who discovers a new post of mine also gets curious about the older ones, and suddenly a single person ends up reading three or five of my posts. I'm already very regretful that I didn't start writing earlier. During the pandemic, while locked down at home in Kuştepe, Istanbul, I could have written a lot in the time I spent watching Doctor Who and following review videos. I didn't start writing to make money, as I mentioned in my first post, but now I can't lie, earning even a few dollars from a hobby every month is exciting. 
4. Besides, I'm sure you'll be surprised when you see the figure in this post. Don't scroll down, keep reading; let's not spoil the surprise. :)

What Have I Learned?

In the past three months, I have produced a total of fifteen posts. The articles I wrote in July are not the subject of this post. When I review my comments in the previous post, I can list the things I didn't know back then but have now learned, or the things I was unsure about but now I am sure of:

1. Original content still has a special place in the blogging world: Even if you write about very cliché topics, add your own comments and experiences to your post. Each of us is a treasure; all our experiences are valuable. When you add these experiences to your text, your post evolves, your readers become curious about what you've added, and you get read again.
2. Attracting new readers is very difficult: How many people read books that people will open accounts on blog sites, follow someone, and read posts? The number of those who join the partner program is even less. I have over 5000 followers on LinkedIn. I make sure to share my posts there, on Instagram, and Twitter, paying attention to the timing and hashtags. Posts like "Why Do I Run," "Cappadocia Ultra Race, and Self-discipline" and "Self-discipline 2," which I wrote with great effort, were not read enough even by my several hundred runner followers.
3. People are very curious about earnings-related posts and love them: The most earning post was "How Much Did I Earn in My First Month of Blogging (April 2024)." That's why I'm writing this. 😜 (The second place was "Why Do I Run?" I shouldn't neglect my beloved running team.)
4. Technical posts are rarely read when first published but will definitely be found by enthusiasts over time: Writing technical posts is very hard. You need to provide accurate and up-to-date information to the reader. You must find the most appropriate title and the most relevant content for your post. The enthusiast of such posts probably comes once every two or three months, but when they do, they spend a lot of time on the post (which is a determinant for earnings). While other posts earn four cents from non-member readers, the reader of a technical post, without even realizing it, leaves at least one or two dollars on the post. If they are members, applaud, and comment, even better. Such posts require patience. Also, one of the reasons I write technical posts is prestige. It doesn't matter if it doesn't earn.
5. Get help from AI but never copy-paste: I don't want to sound like your literature teacher, but original content where you add your experiences and life is much more valuable on blog platforms than any AI production.
6. Finding a niche: It is thought that focusing on three specific topics and writing posts on them will attract more readers. This idea is probably correct, but I also love writing about other areas. This is my space, who cares? Those following for running can read about the strange event I experienced at the Evgeny Grinko concert as well. What if I don't write anything other than those three topics and lose many potential readers?

Notes and Homework for Myself to Get More Reads:

1. Keyword Hunting

From what I've read and seen in many good earning bloggers' posts, keywords are very important. Instead of playing to ourselves on blog platforms, gaining readers from search engines is much better. There are some websites and paid products where we can hunt for keywords like Google Trends. I don't even know their names yet, but I need to get into these and quickly produce posts on the most searched keywords related to my interest. When I learn, if there hasn't been anything written about these topics, I'll start writing about them.

2. Read More Blogs

I definitely need to spend much more time here. When I go to my phone settings, this platform should be the most used mobile application. Let it be. It wasn't Instagram anyway, which is a source of pride for me. Besides, spending too much time here can also be dangerous. We have seen that the accounts of our friends who interact very normally are closed.

3. Read More Books

I started a series that will be both high-quality and quirky: "My Sci-Fi Madness." You can read the introduction article here, and the first article titled "Dissing Dune" here. I definitely need to read many more sci-fi books so that more review posts come out.

I have a book in my hand that could fundamentally change my writing method: "The Art of Planned Writing, Composition" by Arif Hikmet Par. It's actually number one on my list of books to read. You can find it as a rare work in Taksim Atatürk Library in Istanbul. Taking it out of the library and borrowing it is prohibited. It's such a valuable book. I need to read this very valuable book, which I read in high school with my frivolous mind and tried to benefit from for writing better articles in the school newspaper, again with a more mature mind.

I need to write more and more…

As you know, I have two accounts: one in Turkish and one in English. Strangely, the Turkish account earns more. This is entirely thanks to Medium Türkiye. Thank you very much, friends. It would be much more difficult for me to be noticed without you.

$46.54

I paid fifty dollars each when opening the accounts. My posts have already paid for one of them in three months. Even small amounts that increase little by little make me very happy. Of course, there are people whose earnings are many times this in the first few weeks. There are so many posts titled "How I Earned This Much in This Several Weeks." Unfortunately, I don't have such a special niche that many people would read. I may not have discovered it yet either. I'm in no hurry. Let it be slow but steady, it doesn't matter at all.

What are you waiting for? Open an account, write a few stories, and join us. You don't have to be good, and you certainly don't have to be "perfect." Let's read, write, clap, highlight, comment, and earn together. To open an account, all you need is a Gmail account. Everybody has one. Maybe your posts will earn much more than mine. We applaud you. We are waiting.

This article originally published on Medium