People often think that blogging is just a waste of time. Today, almost everything is about money and many do get involved in a never ending race to get rich.
They are often running and not seeing opportunities that they got if they just rest a bit from the run. My journey with blogging and writing tutorials has given me a lot more than money ( and some money also 🙂 ).
When I have started learning web development I have read many websites with tutorials such as Tuts+, SmashingMagazine and many other popular websites. I always looked at all those articles and thought of the authors like supermans at web development.
I didn`t realize then that by reading so many tutorials I have learned how to write them also! Since many tutorials are written in a similar fashion your brain does remember all that and You already know how to structure a tutorial, how to write a tutorial for other beginners or how to write for advanced readers.
Some of my first articles were on a website where We have tried to make something like a tutorial website for other members of our forum. There I have tried myself in writing tutorials and I have found out that I already knew how to structure my article and how to write all those information (even if I was not an expert).
Create your own Website
LakoTuts is a website where I write tutorials on Croatian. I have never thought of making money with it (I would make tutorials on English). I wanted to help others with web development, share my case studies and write news about IT.
When you start writing tutorials on your language where the audience is not so big it is a bit hard at the beginning. I had to constantly share my articles on forums, Facebook, Twitter and etc.
With all that I have learned a little bit of marketing and how hard that stuff is. People want to learn, especially something that will show them how to solve their problem. This is very important because that will give You additional audience that will follow your website and also you on social media.
People are thankful
While I was writing my tutorials I would also get personal e-mails from people who have read my articles. They sent me their background, their story and also how I have helped them to learn.
All those tutorials I have read were paid off, especially when I got e-mails where they explain how my tutorials are more understandable and deeper than others which they have read.
Why are they more understandable? I am always writing tutorials with me in my mind when I started learning. Many of tutorials were not deep enough and some of the things were not explained very well. Because of that, I don`t want to put my readers in that position where they will read something but they won`t understand it.
All those e-mails I have got and all those messages in them were enough for me to write more and feel like I have been doing something good. Money can`t buy you that.
Great for CV
I have applied on many jobs before I have even started working where I work now. In the IT industry, especially in web development and similar jobs it is very important to have a porftolio since that is more valuable than your College degree.
Why? College degree is great and I am not suggesting that you quit the formal education. I want to point out how a portfolio can show others what You know and what You can do.
So, when I have started to find an employment I did not have a great portfolio. I could tell what I have done and how I have done it but that was not really helpful since my own projects were locally hosted on my computer at home.
Today, with my tutorial website I can apply to a job and with all my background and my tutorials which I have wrote I can easily be viewed as an expert in the field. When people read something, especially technical, they automatically assume that the person who wrote it is an expert. That has transferred to online also and every article I write, people will think of me as an expert in that field.
You learn with writing
Sometimes when I want to write a tutorial I choose a technology, technique or even language which I do not know. By forcing myself to write such a tutorial in which I have to explain everything to my readers I am also forcing myself to learn all that is necessary for writing it.
With writing You can easily stay up to date with the technologies that come each day because You will also learn them by writing.
What about the money?
The thing about the money is that it can come from many directions. In my story, by writing specific tutorials (WordPress) I was recognized as a WordPress Expert and contacted from several people.
Because of that I am now working on few interesting projects where I have already learned a lot. Everything that I have learned here will be also written as tutorials in a near future. So there you go, writing = projects = writing and so we can go indefinite 🙂
With all my knowledge that I have already acquired I have become a partner in projects and also an author of the recognized network Tuts+. I have even become a better person and I also feel better when helping others.
Conclusion
By now writing tutorials for money I was never stressed out if I would earn something from all those articles. I have never felt like my time was wasted doing this due to all those positive e-mails.
After some time I have become a better developer and a more understandable one.
Start your own blog. There are never enough of them. I love to read tutorials, even those which topic I already know. Since there are many people, you can always learn a new technique or workflow. So share yours!
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