Finally!

I have been trying to get Google to let me serve ads on my website for quite some time. This time, it agreed.

But why?

Well, it takes a lot of time and effort to create and manage a website. I have spent countless hours on this website. It doesn’t look like that, but wait until you make your website, and you’ll know. On top of that, I have also designed the theme for this website. Again, a lot of time went into that.

As much as I like building stuff, I don’t like to do it for free. At least, not at this stage when I don’t have enough money. I want to make my effort count. That’s why I have been trying to monetize Dyfrad.

But it’s not just about money. It’s more about growth.

I feel like my website has graduated from school. Now it can go out and earn.

“But your website is shit!”

I would rather say that it’s a “teenager” at this stage, and just like any other teenager out there, it’s a mess.

From October 2019 to June 2020, it tried to be an awesome Physics website and failed miserably. That was the adolescence stage. It had some dreams, some too-hard-to-achieve dreams.

After that, it became a bit less ambitious and tried to act like a blog and also an informative website. That too didn’t work out well. It needed an identity. It could either grow into a personal website or a tutorial website, but it was trying to be both.

At this stage, I quickly learned that this website needs a radical change, and Google monetization added fuel to that idea.

What’s next?

I need two things:

A blog

In July, I wrote regularly, and it was such a relaxing exercise. Every evening I would sit quietly for about an hour and reflect on my life. I need that! I stopped writing in August because I was developing Sencilla and LaTeX based CV templates. Now that these projects have matured, I want to get back to writing.

And a platform to teach

I was trying to do that before I started writing personal blog posts on this website. The articles I wrote were not great, but I had put a lot of time trying to do it well. It stopped because of blogs and later due to the development as mentioned above. But, again, now that development is not at its peak, so I want to get serious and start teaching.

Planned changes

I am planning to migrate my personal posts to msaharan.com. Initially, I had planned to make it a professional and portfolio website. Now I feel that it can also have my personal stuff. I won’t be able to write about some issues, but it would do the job.

For Dyfrad, I am planning to make it a tutorials only website focusing on programming, data science, web development, and, of course, Linux. Now that it is eligible to run ads, it should be able to generate some income in about six to eight months.

Recently I bought one more domain – LibreNav.com. I had planned to make it a “free career navigation helper” website but I now I feel that this plan is too ambitious at this stage. I don’t have enough resources available right now to be able to do that. I am planning to make it an “all things academia” website so, I would migrate the academia specific articles from Dyfrad to LibreNav. That should be good for starting, I think.

A long way to go

I am learning a lot these days. Every day I come across something I desperately need but don’t know. Yesterday I found that Sencilla is not optimized to run ads. I need to make some structural changes to make some room for ads. That’s just one thing. To be able to make a successful tutorials website, I would need to put a lot of effort in writing quality articles. That itself is a skill I need to master. It comes with practice.

Countless other things go into building and managing a website, and I don’t know a lot of them, as of now. But I am hopeful. One year ago, I didn’t know how to make a website. Until about five months ago, I didn’t know that WordPress is a waste of money for a person like me. In June/July, I learned to design a website as per my needs. In August/September, I became relatively proficient in Jekyll based themes.

I have learned a lot in the past year. I am happy and satisfied. And, by the way, Dyfrad turns one on 12th of October. :-D

Share your thoughts