When I started this blog 5 years ago, I had no other intentions than doing it for fun. I spent most of the time writing about things that were on my mind, or sharing essays that I wrote back in high school which I honestly did not think people out there would appreciate them.
Blogging has never been a priority because I was so caught up with studies, part-time jobs and there were times when I was just lazy. Initially, I had an average of 10 views per day which was mainly from my own traffic because I was my own avid reader at that time. I would revisit my old posts and search for mistakes and correct them. The highest monthly pageviews I have ever received in 5 years was >75,000 based on the statistics. Currently, my blog has a total of 1.7 million pageviews in less than 5 years and I am hoping to reach 2 million by middle of next year!
Indeed a small and humble beginning in 2014 where I was the one who viewed my own posts for the views. My blog started to receive organic views only after 2 years later.
Having your personal domain is necessary for a more professional-looking website. Most of the professional bloggers I know own a domain (.com, .my, .org etc) so I decided to get one. I tried purchasing my own domain few years back, but the installation process was complicated and lengthy so I decided to stick with aaronnavit.blogspot.my instead.
I finally bought Aaronnavit.com domain this year from https://my.godaddy.com as I wanted to take blog-writing more seriously. My blog has never looked better! A domain can be pricey though, depending on the types and the service providers. I highly recommend buying a domain from https://my.godaddy.com as they are offering competitive prices with less hassle installation.
Top countries where my readers are from. Surprisingly, quite an amount of readers are from non-English and non-Malay speaking countries.
Looking at the analytics from blogger.com, my old posts are the ones that have been viewed the most out of any other contents that I have made. This tells me that something about the stories, narration, ideas and experience are of valuable to people out there. Yours too, so keep on doing what you do best and do not give up! After 2 years of blogging, I received an average of 3000 - 5000 views per day on these posts, but there were less engagement with my readers.
In recent years, I have an average of 32,000 - 37,000 pageviews per month. In the last 30 days, I had over 32,000 pageviews. If this is consistent, I will achieve 2 million pageviews by May or June 2021!
Since then, I have been religiously replying to each comment on the posts and also emails, hoping to make a good impression out there. I felt glad to be able to help my readers with their queries. That was one of the satisfactions I had as a blogger, to be of some help to others. Also, I wished I could have added a Mailing List Subscription in the website. It is so important to have a database of my readers’ emails so they can get an email update every time I publish a post.
I know this is such a shameless plug-in, but please leave a like on my Facebook page while you're here. Hehe. Please comment the URL to your page below, I promise to return the likes!
Facebook has been one of the best platforms to share my writings. For that purpose, I made a separate Facebook Page just for the blog, fear that people on my personal account would feel annoyed and uninterested seeing posts I shared from this blog. I used to have a manually installed Facebook Page pop-up bar, where readers would be able to like the page every time they visit my blog. I had over 1.3K likes and follows, thanks to this plug-in. Unfortunately, the pop-up has been removed after the blog’s theme changed. I am still figuring out how to reinstall it back.
For some, these numbers or pageviews may not mean anything but it has definitely played a huge part in the development of this blog. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are helpful too. From merely writing about non-sensical things to receiving collaboration opportunities and product reviews from clients, I would say the numbers are important because they indicate the blog's reputation. Also, never underestimate a good social media presence!
Probably one of the best comments from my readers. Receiving a thanks from them is the best thing ever.
Only recently, I have been actively seeking for collaboration opportunities on Facebook groups. I discovered that there was a whole blogger community on Facebook that is dedicated to help bloggers to look for clients and collaborations. Thanks to this community, I was able to find few clients and had been offered writing jobs by PG Mall, OldTown White Coffee, Shopee, Gong Cha, facial brands, pet foods and more recent is a collaboration opportunity with a Publisher from Canada, which I will be paid every time my story/book is sold (which I have yet to accept, taking into account of my busy study schedule). I might need a proper plan for my blog next year.
Also if you notice, this blog does not contain any Google Adsense advertisement. My applications for putting ads for revenue from Google Adsense had been rejected every time for some unknown reasons. If any of you know how to fix this, let me know. I might need an advice or two from you. The only driving force of this blog and revenue sources are these review and collaboration write-ups that I am currently doing. I did sign up for a few affiliate programs, but most of the ads shown were not targeted to readers in Malaysia. Hence, I did not put up the ads.
I kind of have stopped writing about personal stories online, when this type of content has actually contributed a lot to my blog's traffic even until these days. I have been wanting to balance between writing my own stories and collaboration posts to keep my blog's momentum going. Let’s see what kind of content I can come up with next year.
With 2020 coming to an end very soon, it just feels surreal how blogging has given me opportunities I never knew existed. I get to interact with thousands of strangers online and helped them in any way possible, getting clients for collaborations and such. If I could turn back the time to when I first started blogging, I would tell myself to be more active, engaging and be better in writing. I may have never considered blogging as a full-time job but who knows what the future holds, right?
Finally, one simple advice to all new writers/bloggers who are reading this, keep on doing what you do best. Your effort will bear fruits someday.
Let's motivate each other to be better everyday!
Wishing all of you an advanced Happy New Year 2021. Here's to more successes with blogging.
Thanks for reading.
AARONN AVIT AJENG
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