I decided to tell you how the experience of writing articles has been useful for me in life.
And this time I won't even squeeze boobs, but will get straight to the point, enjoy.
Nothing is Impossible
5 years ago the only thing I could do with a computer was play games. But I overcame myself, learned HTML, later CSS and JavaScript, started understanding how my blog engine works. Independently uploaded the blog to hosting, bought a domain. Honestly, the first steps were wildly difficult - nothing was clear, and I wanted to give up a hundred times.
It turned out that in our age there's absolutely nothing impossible if you have Google. Any task can be solved if you clearly see the goal and the steps you need to take.
Don't Focus on What You Can't Control
The first year my blog was barely read by anyone - who the hell needs it? Any blog will be in complete oblivion for some time until you write it - your star article. Which one will become the star - who knows. For example, mine was about whether Czech is easy to learn.
Even today half of all readers come through it. This happens because Google and Yandex show it in high positions for the query "Czech language".
But the thing is, I used to try to please search engines - tried to fix titles, links, basically did useless crap. A couple years passed - Google doesn't really show this page anymore, and Yandex puts it in first place a couple times a week.
What did I do for this? Nothing. I have no control over it, but I don't worry and just write. And the rest - there's no point focusing on it.
People Aren't Idiots
When I just started writing, I highlighted every word, made nice headers, marked links in green. Over time it became clear - nobody fucking needs this. It's better to write a paragraph of text briefly and concisely than to chew over every detail. People aren't stupid, they'll understand.
People Are Idiots
But it's not that simple. I always thought - when I come to someone's site, first I read the article, then comments, then try to understand everything. If something's not clear, I use the site search. If still not clear - I ask in comments, format the comment so people understand where the question even came from. I ask the question clearly: instead of "help, my son is in trouble!!111" I say "how many euros will I spend per month on a dorm?"
I thought all my readers were like me. I made convenient search, I worked so comments were convenient to read and leave.
And you know what? In 5 years the search button wasn't even pressed 100 times, so I just removed it. In comments nobody gives a shit that 5 minutes ago I answered the same question - nobody ever read the comments. You know what's the most frequent comment on the article about how to send mail to Czech Republic? Something like "and will I also have to pay duty?"
Writing Articles Fixes Your Brain
Actually, writing coherent text is quite a difficult task. In school people are tortured with essays, and I do this voluntarily.
It turned out that writing helps structure things in your head. I'm generally sure that a large part of my recent success in life is due to me being a graphomaniac.
And also, a normal person accumulates a lot of junk in their head that would be nice to remember, but there's no more room for it. This includes our grievances against someone, emotions from trips, and just good ideas that might be useful in the future. A blog is good because you can write it down, forget it and remember it in 2 years when you need it.
That's why sometimes I just dump on the blog photos from trips that interest no one. Because after the first year in Czech Republic I faced a problem - I don't remember where I've been. And this despite the fact that before Czech Republic I never left home.
You Can't Make Money on a Russian-Language Blog Today
Everything you wanted to know but were too afraid to ask. My blog is read by 300-400 people a day. I tried running Google ads and made $60 in 3 months.
To make it clearer, I write each article for one to two hours. In 2-3 hours at work I earn exactly those $60 that come from the blog in 3 months. What a philanthropist I am. All for you, for free.
Russian-language views are some of the cheapest on the internet. If writing in Czech, even single views per day can bring more. Such things.
What Fame Is
Many Czech friends are shocked when they hear numbers like 20,000 views per month. By Russian standards I'm nobody.
In the first years I was extremely pleased that anyone visited me at all. When 100 people a day started reading, I was already the happiest writer on earth. Today it's 300-400, and again I consider myself a complete loser - that's nothing at all.
But the answer to the question "how to become a famous blogger" became more or less clear. It's simple - you need to already be famous for something else. And to become famous for something else, the right stars need to align, there are no other ways.
They say if you do something for 10,000 hours, you'll become cool. I think it's complete bullshit - it's just that if you do something for 10,000 hours, the mathematical chance of getting lucky increases. There are people who get lucky almost immediately, and there are those who will never get lucky. I'll get lucky soon :)
Respect to These Guys
When you start writing a blog, you understand what it means to create something, even sculptures from shit.
I have many friends on Facebook and VK, tons of acquaintances from school and university, and the Pareto principle works wonderfully as always - 20% of people create 80% of content. The remaining 80% are absolutely incapable of creating anything. Though they usually express it in other words, like "no time", "don't want to", "can't", "tired as it is".
What's sad is that there are many such micro-creators, and quite often people are even engaged in interesting things. The problem is that content consumers are ordinary Ivans who consume what's ALREADY popular. The audience of small blogs like mine is always the coolest guys.
Small independent blogs are only read by those who can distinguish candy from shit at an early stage and aren't afraid to consume something that isn't universally recognized coolness.
There's even a term in English - early adopters. These are people who buy new gadgets first, even when it's unclear how to use them.
Respect to these guys - those who create something and those who are smart enough to understand a project's coolness earlier than others.