Thursday, October 31, 2013
HOW I GOT MY FIRST GOOGLE ADSENSE CHEQUE – BLOGGING IN SOUTH AFRICA
Sometime in 2009, my brother practically begged me to see
the ‘website’ he had created for his stepson. Eventually I clicked on the link
and to my surprise I saw something that I liked and this piqued my curiosity. I
then asked him question after question on how he did that, was it easy, could i
do it?
For years my passion has been movies and TV shows. Movies, I
guess because it always felt like family bonding moments whenever we rented
movies. Movies, as I’m sure the feeling is for everyone, is really escapism
into other worlds or realities, away from the dreary day to day life.
So naturally my first
blog was going to be about movies. I found a template and immediately started
learning to navigate Blogger until I became accustomed to it. Any help I
needed, I consulted my brother or Googled it. I posted reviews about movies I
had seen, expressing my opinions for the world to see. Everyday after work I’d
come home and check my stats. Were there any pageviews? What else could I write
about?
I wasn’t obsessed, but rather excited at the fact that
anything I wrote about could be expelled onto the net for the entire world to
see. I wrote on and off and in 2010 my life changed a bit with a new job and
baby girl. It was then that I created a blog for my daughter also, documenting
her birth in photos.
I blogged until around October 2010 and never touched it
again until July 2012! In this absence, alot changed in the world of blogging.
I needed to change my template again. There were now literally hundreds of
sites with them and codes for all kinds of widgets. I also found Google Adsense
and Google Plus which I now used. It didn’t hurt of course to add some social
networking in the form of Twitter and Facebook pages which automatically
updated whenever I posted something new.
Due to an unfortunate turn of events, I stopped blogging
again as life took it’s toll once more. I then started blogging again in April
2013. Here’s where something changed. To my surprise when I logged in, I found
that my pageviews were in the tens of thousands, that I had followers on
Facebook and Twitter and that I was actually earning money even though I hadn’t
touched the blog in months.
I once again changed my template to update with the times.
There were even more templates to choose from across the web. I fixed my blog
to look more professional and kept watching as my blogs pageviews multiplied.
Then around the beginning of October 2013, I was ecstatic to have received my
first cheque from Google for my work on my blogs.
You can imagine my amazement because what started out as a
hobby and a passion had actually turned into money. From life experiences, I’ve
found that money and passion seldom agree with each other. As I write this, I
see my next cheque is already on the way. I really enjoy blogging and look
forward to doing it for a very long time.
So if you’ve found something you’re passionate about, write
about it.Who knows, your passion could also turn into some welcomed cash.
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