[00:01] and in today's video I want to talk about blogging as a software developer your blog or you may already have a Blog but you haven't written anything in the last six months you know who you are given we now have things like chat GPT
[00:14] posts about anything you can think about is even worth pursuing a Blog at the end of this video I'm going to cover how much traffic my blog is getting as well make sure you stay around for that so the main reason that I have my own blog
[00:28] is to have my own slice of the internet that's 100 mine it's my own space where I can write about anything that I want and no one can take that away from me I or worry that people are going to unsubscribe if I talk about something
[00:41] obviously a lot of content about software development on my blog but it also writes about philosophy entrepreneurship Finance productivity and mental health as well anything goes it's my home on the internet everything
[00:53] that I write whether it be my newsletter or scripts for these videos they all go onto my website so they're all in one point ice I also like to write notes on remember and understand the things I've read even though these notes are mostly
[01:07] them as well which gives them a chance to understand what a book is about as a developer blogging is a great way to share your knowledge there's so much even if you're a beginner I can guarantee that there's something that
[01:22] developers don't know some people like to hoard their knowledge and keep it all always better to share what you know you will find if you're open to sharing your will always come back to you in a number of different ways whether you call it
[01:37] karma or attracting luck helping other people is always going to be a winning strategy I've also found that I think a lot clearer when I write things down I'm to the camera doesn't come naturally to me so I have to write down most of what
[01:50] I'm going to say in my videos if not word for word if I try to just record a video without any preparation then I'd probably forget what I wanted to say and well if fact if you watch some of my older videos where I didn't plan out
[02:03] ums and R's that you could actually make a very good drinking game out of it I something to someone else is a great way to help you understand a topic better knowledge and it will make you a better programmer as a result blogging and
[02:18] writing on the Internet is a great way to build a personal brand now I don't sounds like I'm commercializing myself and in some cases that is what people are trying to do however for me it's more about showing people what I'm about
[02:31] going on a date people are going to Google you if I search for my name on Google the top five results on my website my YouTube channel my LinkedIn profile my Twitter page and my Facebook page believe it or not I'm not the only
[02:44] Alex Hyatt in the world and some of the results on the first page of Google are dominating the first half of the results on Google for my own name there's a high staff as opposed to someone else's if I'm applying for a job they'll see that
[02:57] I write articles and do videos about foreign development now imagine if I didn't have a website or a YouTube channel then a prospective employer one of the other Alex's and think it was me I believe one of the other Alex
[03:10] not going to help me get a job as a software developer unlike some people I'm not going to tell you that you must have a Blog I know plenty of Highly Successful well-paid software developers who don't have a Blog they don't have a
[03:23] GitHub account I have a Blog and a newsletter and a YouTube channel because I enjoy writing and I enjoy helping others I really want to help you be a most out of your career in Tech everything else is really just an added
[03:37] bonus if I apply for a development job then yes maybe my writing will help but candidate with more experience rather blogging for around eight years now but it's only really in the last six months
[03:50] started seeing traction on my blog blogging is a huge time commitment it can take several hours to write a decent blog post to even more if you've got to include code samples as well if you have a full-time job it can be difficult to
[04:03] have a family or other commitments outside of work in fact when I started a new job in 2019 I didn't write any blog posts for the entire year and actually blog posts than I have in my entire time I've been blogging so the moment you've
[04:18] been waiting for how much traffic and how much money do I actually make my blog today my blog gets around 16 000 page views a month now that's not a huge hundreds of thousands of page views a month however traffic is increasing
[04:31] month after month now that I'm writing consistently in fact for the last three months my page views have increased by 3 000 views each month which I think is pretty good if it does continue at this rate then there may well be on nearer 30
[04:43] 000 views a month by the end of the year some of that traffic is of course coming from Google over the years I've tried to learn more and more about SEO and is finally paying off however if Google does decide to change their search
[04:58] engine in favor of an AI then I may find that my traffic will continue writing because I enjoyed doing it even if it means not so many people see my posts so how much do I earn for my blog well the income from my blog is
[05:11] in three main places the first is AD Revenue I used to use Google AdSense on my blog but I only made around three cents a day I could have made a lot more if I filled my blog with lots and lots of adverts but I really didn't like how
[05:24] that go on my blog we're pretty good at ignoring adverts or blocking them completely I now use ethical ads which is made for developers but the main reason for choosing them is because they're more privacy focused they don't
[05:36] spy on the visitors like the other AD networks tend to do I also only have to relevant to the people visiting my website some of the adverts that get shown also for non-profit projects as well which obviously I don't get any
[05:48] money for but at least it's for a good cause so last month with 16 000 page views I got 14.46 which isn't a great amount and Network in February I haven't yet received a payout because I haven't
[06:02] would be higher but of course a lot of around 10 000 of those views are counted I also have a lot of traffic from India highly one from India who's watching but unfortunately it doesn't pay as much as
[06:15] say traffic from the United States if you want to try ethical ads I'll include isn't sponsored in any way I don't get any money if you sign up you will also need over 10 000 page views a month in order to be eligible for those using the
[06:28] brave browser I also signed up for their Rewards program and they sent me around 60p which is around 75 cents a month on top of the ad Revenue I occasionally add that I've read or the products that I've used I mostly use the Amazon affiliate
[06:41] program to link to the books I've read you'll see in the description below I've me in the past generally I make around ten dollars a month from Amazon people clicking on links on my YouTube videos and not just on my blog it's not
[06:54] a great amount but every little helps the last place that I get money from my blog is from donations at the end of my blog posts I include a link to my buy me a coffee page where people can donate money if they found my posts helpful in
[07:06] the last three years I've had three people buy me a coffee from that page so watching that amounts to around 12 pounds or 15 in total so in total my blog is earning me around 25 a month which isn't a great deal but considering
[07:21] I'd write my blog anyway it's a nice little addition I could of course increase my earnings by filling my blog with adverts promoting more products or single page but that doesn't really sit right with me if I haven't used a
[07:34] product I don't feel right personally promoting it to my audience even though the moment it does help people find my YouTube channel and my newsletter which might make me some money in the future I would also like to make courses and
[07:47] to be useful to help people find those as well if you still aren't deterred by your own blog there are a number of ways that you can do that if I was smart this is where I'd start plugging a really expensive blogging platform where I'd
[08:01] do that there's lots of free blogging platforms out there and there's ones that are specifically designed for developers like hashnode and dev.2 these writing online and they do increase your chances your blog posts actually being
[08:14] read I would recommend though blogging on your own domain otherwise you're just else's website hashnode offers this as does medium but with medium you have to pay for their medium subscription to be able to use that feature ghost is
[08:27] Cloud hosting platform if you do sign up for their hosting it also doubles as a expensive if you have lots and lots of subscribers another option is sub stack platform it is completely free they support custom domains and they also
[08:42] well I use substack for my own newsletter and it's been really good so custom website either by hosting your own blogging platform like WordPress or ghost or going down the static site
[08:55] route and using things like Hugo Jekyll or Gatsby this is the route I have taken I have a slightly complicated setup with a Gatsby website hosted on AWS 3 and then I use strappy as the CMS in the back end personally I wouldn't go down
[09:08] this route to start with one of the reasons why I didn't blog much in the too much time customizing my website and trying to get it to look how I wanted it writing on top of that you have to worry about performance and SEO and these
[09:22] things can take quite a long time to get right the main benefit of going down the cheapest options if you want to self-host you can host your website for free on GitHub Pages or you can do what I do and host it on AWS my AWS bill is
[09:36] only 50 cents a month and that is really only for the Route 53 hosted Zone with a worry about traffic spikes too much because there's no database in the back end that could go down when one of my posts went on the front page of Hacker
[09:48] News I got 10 000 people on my website in a very short period of time and my own website but you're not getting any traffic and you want more people to read your posts then you can cross post them to places like hashnode Dev dot 2 and
[10:02] that you also set up a canonical link which points back to your website version over yours or they'll mark it as duplicate content dev.2 has been especially good and I've had thousands of people read my posts from Cross
[10:16] platform you choose I would recommend also trying to build an email list at on social media or these other platforms is great but you don't control the someone's going to see their posts even
[10:30] there's always a chance the platform could kick you off and you'd lose the audience you've spent ages building up I can see for my newsletter stats that 40 to 45 of the people that are subscribed open and read my newsletter that's a
[10:42] of people that are subscribed to my YouTube channel and also watch my videos you don't need a massive following if you have a decent email list you software developer but it can be a fun hobby and it has a few added benefits on
[10:56] to like And subscribe and I'll hopefully see you in the next video