Farmityourself.com was my first major online project and also my first foray into learning how to earn money online. Since I’ve always had a passion for gardening and growing my own food, the idea was pretty simple. I wanted to share some Ideas about how to grow your own vegetables to rank high on Google and see where we go from there.
Where is this project now? Let’s speak numbers!
I launched farmityourself.com in December 2018, shortly after returning from Australia. Before starting the project, I did a test run to learn about keyword research and writing. The dummy site existed for only a few months and was deleted soon after ranking. Therefore, the real start of this project was in June 2018.
Daily Users on my Site from Dez 2018 – Feb 2023
Monthly Users on my Blog
The lessons and challenges that I am going to talk about in this article are based on a small blog with approximately 10k monthly users.
What challenges did I face?
After coming back from Australia I was eager to continue working on creating online content. So, I decided to try building up my blog full time for a few months to see if it would lead anywhere.
Writing isn’t easy
Creating content is rewarding work, but some days my brain would refuse to cooperate. Instead, I find myself in a staring contest with a blank page. I had plenty of those days while writing for farmityourself, as well as all my other projects, including school assignments. For me those days were spent looking for interesting topics and search queries or building out the structure of the articles I want to write over the next few days.
When you don’t work for someone else and have no one to hold you accountable, developing good discipline is essential. That doesn’t mean you have to force yourself to do the task you currently can’t do. It’s about staying focused and continuing to work on the project in a reasonable way. Sometimes, that means taking a detour, but in most cases, this detour turns into a shortcut.
Wanting too much in too little time
Patients is a virtue, especially in the online content word. Some things just take time and there is nothing you can do about that. This graph shows rather well that, in the first ~5 Months, almost no-one visited my site. During that time I spend 8+ hours a day writing content (I’m a really slow writer). I remember the days where I started to ask myself if I made the right decision. Was learning about blogging the right thing to do or should I rather spend my time elsewhere?
What if it doesn’t work?
Of course I also started to doubt my ability to make it work at one point. Maybe I’m just not the right person to start a blog. My slow writing speed and low numbers made those intrusive thoughts louder and louder.
But then the magic happened. Around May, my website started to gain traction, reaching a high of 5k monthly users. Which, at the time, was an unbelievable achievement. Little did I know, that it wouldn’t be all uphill from here. Gardening/Farming is a seasonal niche. I knew that when I started my blog, but I only fully understood it once the view count started to freefall into the abyss. And at that point I gave up. I wasn’t sure if I can make it work long-term after the first year, so I wanted to have a back-up and also learn more about some other topics. I decided to get a degree as nutritionist, which took me another 3,5 years to complete. During that time I barely published and only wrote sporadically. In my defense I had to work full time to finance my studies. But something unexpected and amazing happened in the meantime.
Why starting farmityourself was a great decision
Farmityourself was my introduction to a completely different type of work that I never learned about in school. This project ultimately led to all my other projects and was the main reason why I decided to become self-employed.
This project helped me establish a foundation of all the basic skills necessary to start and build a business (I will delve into more detail later). It also taught me patience and the understanding that sometimes things take a lot of time to catch on. At one point, the site reached almost 20k pageviews without me doing any significant work after I started studying. It really changed my perspective. Creating online content is not like a normal job where you get paid every month for the hours you worked. Online content takes much longer to become relevant but also pays you for much longer. This applies not only to money but also to the skills you learn. I wrote another article talking about Investing in yourself, that goes into more detail.
Another crucial lesson I learned was that most things are temporary. I remember the thrill of seeing my article hit that sweet first place in the Google ranking. I also remember the disappointment of my article falling down the ladder once it became redundant, and better content took its place.
But the worst feeling was something different. I remember writing an article identifying every common vegetable seed. I came up with the idea because one of my seed packages spilled in my container and I didn’t know which seed it was. First, I conducted my usual competition and keyword analysis and all seemed good. Excited about this articled, I started to prepare some basic backgrounds so I can photograph every seed I own to make a comprehensive list with some added details about the plant. It took me a week to finish this article – but it never reached the first page.
// Update: unbeknownst to me, the article did start ranking. Well there goes my story but the same is true for many other articles I wrote. Maybe I should use this story as a lesson in patients instead…
What challenges do I still have to overcome?
Not everything is in the past. I want to continue working on farmityourself.com as a passion project, and here are some of the challenges I still need to figure out.
Passion alone won’t get you there
That was another lesson I learned during this project. I love growing my own foodstuff and learning more about it, but it’s not what I want to do as my only job. I’m passionate about this topic, and especially the lifestyle, but it’s not what I see as my main income source. It’s more of a fun side project.
I talked about it in the Purpose Quiz but I didn’t find my purpose in the gardening niche.
Managing my time
Time management isn’t my strong suit. There are simply too many things I want to accomplish during the day, making it impossible to fit them all in. am still trying to find a balance between how often I publish and write and how much time I spend on my primary business. The same was true, when I was working and studying. I find it much easier to focus 100% on one project until it’s completed and then move on to the next. Focusing on multiple important projects is a skill that I definitely need to improve on, but I plan to write a comprehensive article about this topic.
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Now, let’s get practical. Having a passion project is great, but it doesn’t hurt if it also pays some spare change every once in a while. When I started my blog, I knew nothing about monetizing it, and it really shows. Once I got approved by my advertising network I let them handle all the implementation and placement of the ads. And never touched it since.
There are way too many advertisements on my site, and some of them are poorly placed, interfering with the content. On a similar note, I need to read about advertisement on a blog site. Maybe it’s time to change providers or look for some alternative methods to monetize the site. I’m amazed that people choose to stay on the site after being bombarded with that many ads.
Affiliate and other monetization methods
One way to monetize my blog could be through affiliate marketing, a topic I never really got into. Especially, since most of my articles discuss important things to know when you want to grow something, but less about the product side of things. Surely there are even more options I currently don’t know about that are worth investigating.
Was it financially worth it?
So it’s all about the money? No. I started this blog for the love for the topic, and that’s also my reason for keeping it going. I always found it weird to monetize something you do out of passion. However, it isn’t sustainable to do it only for free. Writing content takes a lot of time and running a blog also costs some money (I’ll share some numbers later). It’s hard to keep a blog running if it doesn’t earn you anything at all.
On average, I earn about 12$/1000 views (from April 2019-Dez 2022). I don’t know how much time I spend on this project in total, but I’m certain that I would have earned more if I were working minimum wage.
What did I take away from this project?
As my first project working online, I had to learn a lot of the basics first. Here’s what I needed to do to start an online blog:
- Register a Website
- Build a basic Blog website
- Find topics for blog posts
- Write blog content that ranks on google
- Find & create images for blog posts
- Register your own business
- Earn money by placing advertisement on a blog
- Manage joined projects with other creators or companies
- The confidence to create
Let’s go into more details on each of those steps.
How to register a Website?
I started with Bluehost and later upgraded to a better hosting service. But there are many different hosting and domain registry providers. When you start out, it’s enough to look for the cheaper options, which cost between 1-10$/Month. That’s all you need to pay to run a blog. However, adding some tools or switching to a better hosting provider will significantly increase the cost.
Build a basic Blog website
Building a basic blog website is a lot easier than I initially thought. I just used a reasonable free theme and created the basic pages such as Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions, and About Me. I linked them all in the Menu or Footer and added some legal text to the sidebar.
Next, I installed some basic SEO plugins such as Yoast, connected to Google Analytics & Search Console, and installed a cookie plugin. Now, it’s time for the main part – finding topics for blog posts.
Find topics for blog posts
Finding a topic to write about is easy. Finding a good topic to write about, you’ll also have a chance to rank, is a lot harder. I mostly worked with google autocomplete to find a search queries. Once I found an interesting topic I check the first page of results.
I always went through these questions to decide whether I’ll write about it or not:
- Did a really popular/big blog already write about it?
- Can I add more value to the topic (compared to the first 5 results)?
- Is there another overlooked perspective on the topic?
- Do I want to write about it anyway?
Most of the decision making process becomes intuition after a while. You simply know which topics are a good shot and which are an uphill battle.
Write blog content that ranks on google
Writing content that ranks is measured by how helpful the information you provide is. Furthermore, touching relevant follow-up questions and going beyond the initial query can help to get a good ranking.
But most of it is practice. Once your blog gets some authority, ranking becomes a lot easier and faster. You’ll also get a feeling for what will go well and what wont.
As a non-native English speaker, it’s also a lot about learning the language and how to express your ideas.
Find & create images for blog posts
Pictures help to communicate a lot of information visually. Good images can raise the quality of an article tremendously, and even mediocre pictures help to improve the structure of the article. I always tried to add some relevant pictures to my articles. That means I always had a camera with me to take pictures of the thing I’m currently working on. For all the topics I didn’t have any (good) pictures, I’d use Pixabay.com, Freepik.com, or Wikipedia Creative Commons.
Register your own business
At one point, my site had enough visitors to qualify for an advertisement network. But before I could start earning money with my blog, I needed to register a business. Here in Germany, all you need to do is go to your local government office and leave some cash (about 50€). It’s done in less than 30 minutes.
But now, you also have to do your taxes for the business, so that’s something to look out for before registering your business, which will take either some of your time or money for a tax agent.
Earn money with a blog
After I got accepted by my advertisement network, I let them handle all the placements and maintenance of the ads. At the time, I wasn’t really interested in those topics, but I already talked about that.
Manage joint projects with other creators or companies
Working together with other creators and companies can be fun and frustrating. It’s important to clearly communicate what both sides want out of the deal and don’t rush to come to an agreement. Collaborations are a great way to benefit both parties if done right. I’ll share some specific stories in my blog.
The confidence to create
Learning these practical skills is important, but there was a much bigger benefit. When I started creating online content, I wasn’t sure if it would ever go anywhere. Reaching 5000 monthly visitors was like permission to create things. I know that’s a flawed way of thinking, but that was what I needed at the time. It taught me the value of standing up for what you believe and following your passion and purpose. There is no certainty in life, and embracing that is the first step to building something you can be proud of.