Year in Review 2018 : Sucess & Failures (& Income Report)

So, it has been ages since I last posted on BlogRags.

I agree ????

No, I won’t tell that I’ll be regularly posting from now, because I don’t always keep up with that promise (you know better). But one of my resolutions this year is to post at least one content per month (already late on this) on BlogRags.

Let’s see if I am able to keep up to that resolution. But enough of promises, let’s get right into the article.

In this article, I will share my journey in 2018 as a blogger & working as a full time marketer for a startup.

So before I get into specific details, I’ll summarise the data about BlogRags & BlogRags YouTube channel.

BlogRags

So this year has been the worst when in comes to number of articles published on BlogRags when compared to 2017. I was only able to post 3 articles, out of which one was contributed my friend Faiz, about micro niche blogging.

In terms of traffic, there was a 50% increase in traffic especially because of these two articles - Blog Commenting & 30+ Free Quality Backlinks.

Analytics Website

Top 3 Posts for 2018 -

Web 2.0 Link Building [The Complete Guide] – Get #1 Ranking
Blog Commenting : The Tactics I Used to Generate 100+ Comments
30+ Free High Quality Backlink Sources – Ultimate List

I was especially proud of the Blog Commenting article, mostly because of the design & content of the post. The post did really well, more than 155 comments so far (many include my replies to comments also) & people were very curious, as to how did I design the page. I designed it completely using Thrive Architect . A great tool ????

BlogRags YT Channel

I could only post 3 videos, one being a webinar conducted by Faiz Israili. The webinar has done quite well & we were able to add 125 subscribers this 2018. Overall watch time was more than 14,000 minutes. Crazy isn’t it.

Most Popular Video - Micro Niche Webinar By Faiz Israili.

Analytics YouTube

Now that I have summarised about BlogRags & YT channel , let’s look at my success & failure of 2018.


Since beginning of 2018, there was one thing that constantly troubling me.

What should I do after college?

So, college was about to complete in few months, I wasn’t sure what exactly to do after college.

Should I completely focus on BlogRags? Niche Site or job ?

Whichever it maybe I did not want to work for an IT company. I loved blogging & I wanted to continue the same.

I am fortunate to have started a career in something that I am really passionate about. I really want to take this opportunity to thank my family and friends (especially Gaurav) for the support.

But the problem with doing full time blogging, is that it’s quite tough in some cases like in mine, where you don’t have a consistent income flow. Since most of my money was being generated through Freelance projects, it was not something I could rely completely on after college. This is the reason you will see many part time bloggers.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many full time bloggers in India as well but it all depends on your current situation.

So in April 2018, I joined AirCTO (a Tech recruitment firm) as a Lead Marketer. Having no professional experience, I was very scared but the journey has been awesome so far. This wouldn’t be possible without the support of Atif Haider (Founder & CEO of AirCTO).

There are some milestones at AirCTO I wanted to share with you guys. Since in 2018 my most focus was for AirCTO, there were quite many milestones/events I want to share-

1. Quora 

Quora is a very powerful platform for any company/individual. I was fortunate to meet Balaji Viswanathan (most followed person on Quora). You can read the complete interview here.

But Quora is a great platform to generate leads or build awareness across your product. Quora is one of the major traffic sources for our leads at AirCTO. I am close to hitting 200k views on Quora. You can follow me here

Tips for Quora

- Answer only relevant questions. Don’t spam.
- Answer as detailed as possible. The more detailed the better.
- Try to add relevant images as possible.
- When answering questions, check if the answer has decent number of views.
- See the number of answers before answering those questions. You might don’t want to answer a question which has already more than 50+ answers

2. LinkedIn Posts

When I joined AirCTO, there was no specific strategy for LinkedIn posts. In most of the cases the same content would get published on LinkedIn ( as on Facebook, Twitter). Since most of our customers are on LinkedIn, I tried to figure out a better approach for LinkedIn. 

My findings were -

1. Longer content works better on LinkedIn. Same as Quora, the more detailed the content is the better. It supports maximum of 1300 characters, so make sure to make the optimum use of these characters.

2. Formatting matters a lot on LinkedIn. Nobody likes to read through big paragraphs. One sentence per paragraph also works well. Try to make use of proper tags and emojis.

Here is one example- 

3. Video is going to be huge in the coming days. Just remember when using Videos on LinkedIn , add subtitles. Either you can add the srt or make the subtitles inbuilt.

4. Try to use relevant hashtags. Don’t overdo it.

5. If you are planning to make viral posts on LinkedIn you need to have a proper strategy. I plan to make a small tutorial on that, feel free to leave your details here, I’ll send once it’s ready.

3. Getting Viral on Reddit

I know about Reddit for more three years now. But I never succeeded with it. Most of the times I would get banned.

But recently one of my posts got viral on Reddit. With more than 200+ upvotes , it almost crashed our servers.

There’s no secret to Reddit. You need a outstanding content and bit of luck to get viral on Reddit. Here are few tips -

- Try to post only outstanding pieces of content.
- Try to boost your post by getting upvotes from your friends/connections/family.
- Reply to the comments.

4. Creating awesome designs & videos

Since as a blogger you need to do everything yourself, for the past year or two I developed a strong passion for design.

It all started by creating awesome featured images to Ads images to an Ebook to PDF case studies.

I also created this awesome Video for AirCTO Connect (a Developer Community) . This was created through Final Cut Pro.

So there were some highlights from the past year. Clearly BlogRags (that helped me get this job) was neglected from my side. Hope this post let me get things better.

One of the best tools I came across recently is Sketch. It’s very awesome. 

Major Highlights from 2018

1. Joining AirCTO as a Lead Marketer

I always thought Jobs are boring. You won’t be able to grow. But I was wrong. My journey so far has been amazing. Trust me there’s no better thing than to work for a startup. There’s always a challenge & it helps you grow and discover your skills.

Before joining AirCTO, I never focused on Social Media but it helped me sharpen my Social Media Marketing (especially LinkedIn) Skills. 

2. Graduating from College  

Trust me college days are the best. If you can make most of the time there, you’ll have an awesome work life. But if you don’t it will be tough. I am glad to have achieved so much in College.

You make awesome friends & it’s very important to discover yourself and ultimately grow as an individual.

3. Selling a Niche Site for low 4 figures

I sold a Amazon Affiliate micro niche site on Flippa. While I could have made more , I let it go. After starting multiple amazon affiliate sites, I found success with this one. One thing I understood was if your niche and keywords you target are right , you can easily make 200$ per month using Amazon Affiliate. Just make sure to mix your affiliate content with normal posts.

I will soon post a case study on the same.

4. Buying a Macbook Pro  


One of the main reasons I got into blogging was because of the love of gadgets. You can read more here.

I always dreamt of getting a Apple Laptop. But I never thought that I will pick the Macbook Pro. I was waiting for the Macbook Air refresh but it launched quite late.

I picked the 13 inch Macbook Pro (256gb model). I’d recommend everybody to get a Macbook , the whole ecosystem is great. It rarely hangs & great battery life.

5. Trips

There were multiple trips that I made this year (none to a foreign country ????). 

Going Home

I live Bengaluru, but I am originally from Jamshedpur. It was almost a year since I last visited home. It was great to be back to Home. 

Goa

So after multiple Goa plans in college, it came true after college ????. It was a great trip ????

Cousin’s marriage

I got a chance to meet all the cousins & relatives after a long time. The marriage was in a resort in Mandarmani. It was a wonderful experience.

6. Meeting Awesome people

1. Atif Haider 

Atif Haider is the Founder & CEO of AirCTO (the startup I work for ) . He has been a great mentor for me.

Startups looks cool but it’s not the same inside. A lot of sweat goes into running one. I feel a founders job is the toughest. I especially like his passion and his management skills.

2. Aditya Mishra

Aditya Mishra is currently leads the marketing for Cumulations. I am glad to have met him. His outreach skills are great. We share the same flat. I love his passion & honesty towards work. 

3. Arindam Raha

Arindam is a great designer. He’s quite creative and passionate. I love the way he approaches things.

He has helped me a lot to better my design skills.

I also connected with other awesome peeps like Nivas (leads Marketing at Freshsales), Manish Nepal (Freshchat), Nishant Gupta (Marketer at Zapr Media), Neeraj (Pushstart), Aashish Chopra (VP of Content Marketing at Ixigo), Sravan Kumar & many others.

Income Report 2018 

Here’s the money I made in 2018. It’s nothing inspirational ????

Plans for 2019

1. Contribute one post per month on BlogRags

2. Build a better LinkedIn presence.

3. Connect & Network with more people. Pushstart is especially helping in this.

4. Launching a Ecourse/Ebook.

5. Upskill myself. Get better in Email marketing.

6. Get in a better shape. “Health is wealth”

Conclusion

Hope you liked the article. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or Facebook.

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