HOW A DOMAIN NAME LAUNCHED A CAREER

After reading personal finance blogs for so long, I realized I also had something to say. So I started a blog and after a few months decided to start my own site with my own domain. That meant I had to suck it up and pay for domain registration and for hosting. This was tough to do, but eventually I paid the $80 and started blogging about money on The Writer’s Coin. It was a lot of fun to publish my thoughts and opinions on money and investing.

I wound up getting really into the personal-finance community and amassing a huge collection of content that I’d authored. So when a job interview came up and the hiring managers asked for samples, I had tons to pass along. They said they liked it and asked for more, so I sent more and added a note: “If you want more, I have oodles of this stuff.”

I wound up getting the job on the strength of the material I’d written for the site. The incentive it showed to start my own site and write so much for probably didn’t hurt either. Now I had a new job, but I kept blogging and learning about SEO, Web analytics and social media. The knowledge I gained and skills I attained over the years by blogging eventually helped me land a job as a product manager, which had way more responsibility (and power!) than a mere writer.

All this experience allowed me to connect with Wise Bread and create several side incomes to help prepare my wife and myself for our first baby this summer. The knowledge I picked up about Web analytics drove me to start a consulting business for small businesses and bloggers in need of analytics help. It was relatively easy to get off the ground thanks to the knowledge and experience I gained from starting my first blog.

When I look back at how exorbitant $80 seemed back then, I smile and consider myself lucky for spending it. I made the money back pretty quickly and gained the knowledge, tools and experience that have allowed me to grow way beyond anything I could’ve dreamed of when I shelled out the money for my first blog. 

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