This guest post is by Salman of CompuWorld.
It was the second year of my graduation studies when my dad arranged for an always-on Internet connection at our place and I plunged into online chatting like never before. While I was busy living my fantasies online, my dad was busy scolding me for misusing my time. My frustration level grew exponentially as a result of my family’s reaction towards my style of socializing online. I started a blog on blogspot just to prove that I wasn’t fooling around.
What started as a result of ego has today become the most confusing and alluring career option of my life.
I assumed that my family would be proud of me as I was the only one to have a website of his own in my college. But their reaction was unbelievable. Nobody approved of the writer inside me, as it brought no monetary benefits.
The struggle
I continued to blog on daily basis for the next two years while I was completing my graduation. My first two years’ work brought enough money into my Paypal account that I could start a self-hosted blog on my own. Still nobody approved of my blogging as all that I had earned was already invested back online. Blogging for two years with no earnings whatsoever to show needs patience, and a willingness to ignore the heart-breaking comments from those around me. I became pretty good at that.
With two years of experience and graduation under my belt it was time to join a MNC as a software engineer and give up blogging … but recession came to my rescue! My company delayed my joining for over a year and I was gifted with the necessary time to earn some quick bucks online. I started my career as a freelancer and my earnings touched my current yearly salary in half the time period. Money flowed in and so did the writing contracts from various websites.
Showing an interest
Sometimes money can buy satisfaction, and it did buy my dad’s satisfaction with my alternative career as blogger, which happens to be the default term that my family uses even for freelance writers. Slowly my dad’s interest grew in a business where I was earning loads of money from the comfort of my home and ultimately I registered a domain for him.
I taught him few basic rules for a successful blog:
- Be patient. Your blog will be successful sooner or later.
- Don’t assume that you will be a millionaire straight away. You might earn nothing during your first six months of blogging.
- Use basic terms and never sound overly complex.
My tech blog was two years old when my dad’s blog on stock market tips was launched. Today, his two-year-old blog’s traffic is five times that of mine. His subscribers are double mine. And his earnings per day are four times mine—and all these numbers are growing quickly.
My Dad’s blogging secrets
What did my dad do with his blog that I didn’t do with mine? He invested time into his blog. Dad is a stock market investor and has no boss above him to report to. He shares the stock market news and tips that come by during his regular surfing hours with his blog’s readers. He gives huge amount of time to his blog.
Meanwhile, I hardly get any free time to blog after my day job as software engineer and freelance writing contracts. Also, he is content enough with the trickles that AdSense sends him every day. His motto is to continue blogging as long as he can as he loves to do so.
Today, with over four years of experience as freelance writer, tech tips on my blog might not be generating much traffic but my dad is slowing cruising towards a successful blogging career after learning from my mistakes. Usually it is the son who works hard to fulfill his dad’s dream. In my case, it is my dad working hard and patiently to live my dream.
Salman is a software engineer by profession and blogger at CompuWorld while his dad blogs at BellTheBull and is a full-time investor in share market.
