Me my Coke and I – Blog Case Study

The following post was submitted by ProBlogger regular, Allen Heat, as part of the ProBlogger Case Study Series

6th of May, 2005 – I decided I should find a place to showcase my graphic designs, by that time I didn’t know what PHP meant, all i knew is that i needed a website. I purchased a subdomain at http://heatmax.illusionfxnet.com, and asked my friend to set up wordpress for me; I didn’t know it’s a blogging CMS by then, I just found it cool and easy to use. Infinity Graphic Designs blog came to life.

30th of March, 2006 – I held my first adsense cheque at the age of 16, it wasn’t a $100 cheque, i decided I’m going to make my first cheque reach a lot more than 100 bucks, and let’s say i did reach a lot more =).

Many many things happened between those months that I’d love to share, but since I’m limited in words and you’re limited in time, I’d like to talk about one big change that really affected my blogging: Me, My Coke & I, this blog started as my personal blog, and since I wasn’t expecting anything from it, and wasn’t obligated to write about a specific topic, I just went with the flow.

At some stage I looked at my archive and said: “it’s not even personal”, I didn’t share any juicy secrets from my life, I was just writing about things I’m interested in, so I wrote 10 common mistakes in newly created forums, a post that gave my blog a huge traffic boost. Skipping some parts of the story, I then discovered I’m very interested in tech,gadgets and web, but I never really knew what all those technical terms mean, add to that the fact English is my 3rd spoken language (after Hebrew & Arabic), then why would someone want to read my posts about tech and gadgets???

Cause there are a lot of guys and gals like me, they don’t really care if the MP3 player has a DCME feature (that I just made up), it looks good, it doesn’t cost that much, good sound quality, and it’s 2GB, now i think that’s enough for the average brain to know about an MP3 player.

The fact that I write tidbits (less text, more images) makes it easy for me to write multiple posts a day, update multiple blogs a day, and talk to the audience that aren’t necessarily technical gurus; This is what brought me to the level of traffic I’m have today; There is a lot to improve in terms of traffic, but I know this blog has got the potential, content is king, and persistence is the apprentice.

I’ve managed to turn Me, My Coke & I from an average personal blog, to an online magazine that was mentioned in respected blogs not once, it raised my earnings, it helped me improve my English, and most importantly: it satisfied my passion and my need to blog about anything that interests me, that’s why I chose the motto: Daily tidbits of tech, gadgets and pretty much anything to interest the average mind.

As a 16 years old I’ve managed to see things others wouldn’t, I’m sure there are two implications for sharing my young age in this case: 1. People will start taking my blogs less seriously because I’m a teenager 2. People would look at my achievements as a blogger despite and maybe because I’m a youngster and start taking me more seriously. What you will choose to do is your own business, but I’ve got some deeds to share. As for my future plans, two more blogs are coming in 2006, I just need to find a partner as passionate as me, perhaps a network could be launched before the end of the year.

I learned that content is king, and persistence is the apprentice, I learned that in some cases blogging superficially is probably the right thing, after all the everyday gadget is superficial, we don’t need to respect it that much. I learned that with minimum money and maximum will you can do more than $10 in AdSense. I learned that passion is the key and patience is the door it opens to the road of success. Blogging has brought me too many things to count.

Lastly I’d like to thank the man and the blog – Darren Rowse for guiding me personally and through out his inspiring posts, I’d also like to thank my ego that always talked to me and said “you’re a loser if you give up”, and of course I’d like to thank you bloggers for being a role model at times, for showing me how I shouldn’t act to others, and for reading this long post.