500,000 Views and $1,700 Later — How I turned a hobby into (some) cash
A look back on my adventure as an amateur Medium blogger — wins, bumps along the way, and lessons learned.
I’m an amateur blogger and a professional software engineer.
I initially started blogging on my personal website to collect my thoughts and build up an “online” presence. The standard advice given to new engineers was “start a blog so people know you’re passionate”. I wanted them to know.
The only outcome I cared about was helping others and having something tangible to point to when I got asked “so what do you like to do in your spare time” during an interview — a classic two birds, one stone scenario.
In 2016, I looked at the analytics on my website and it should me that the only person reading my posts was me. While I didn’t care about having a huge audience, the desired outcome of “helping people” necessitates having an audience that you can help. So, I transitioned my blog to Medium.
Since then, I’ve published nearly 81 posts on software engineering, management, leadership, and startups over a nearly 5 year period, and I stumbled into some small measure of success.
