Big Milestone

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Dear Readers,

Thank you for coming here!

Today marks another milestone for this blog.

I have received the first payment of Ads revenue from Google, thanks to all your support!

Google has a threshold of SGD150 for the payment. Last month, I finally reached it and received the first payment in my account yesterday.

166 entries over the last 20 months since I started this blog.

I think that is worth celebrating.

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1.The Start

I started this blog with my first post on 13 Dec 2019.

Long before that, I had the idea.

But I did not get started partly because I was not sure that I could continuously have things to write about, and partly because I was lazy, until the offer retraction.

That was the trigger.

On one hand, I felt I needed to write things down for my emotional wellbeing. My brain was filled with confusion. I could not think straight.

On the other hand, I felt scared. I was not sure how to secure an income going forward. 

Even though I never put much expectation to it, but at the back of my mind, I guess I had the little hope that maybe I could turn this into a source of income.

I also thought about opportunities as taxi driver, cleaner, and courier.

Luckily, I did not need any of these.

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2.The Topics

But once I started, this blog quickly became part of my life.

At the very beginning, I struggled to find topics to write about. 

But very quickly, I developed the habit to note down the topics that came to me while reading, working, watching movies, walking, playing games etc etc

And I almost never had to look for topics to write about again. Typically, I just picked one from my topic pool.

If I had more time, I would pick one that would require more content. Otherwise, I would pick a quick one.

Many times, I did not need to go to the topic pool. The topic would just come to me when the time came to write the entries.

That felt good, like the traffic lights turned green the moment I reached the crossings.

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3.The Promises

Having said that, there were definitely times when I was struggling to meet deadlines of work and found it challenging to find time for this blog.

In times like this, promises helped.

From the very beginning of this blog, I made a serious promise to my readers and myself on regular updates.

I was not sure about the right frequency then, but it had to be regular and predictable.

In the beginning, the posts were less regular, but roughly one per week.

And since beginning of this year, I have stuck to three posts a week, on afternoons/evenings of Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that you can read them on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Without this promise, I would have skipped many entries.

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4.The Sense of Achievement

SGD150 does not make any difference to me. And from my interactions with some of you, it should not matter to any of you either.

If we talk about the ROI, I am not even sure whether this amount is enough to cover the electricity cost incurred for creating these entries over the past 20 months.

But my biggest gain is that I now have you, who are willing to spend the time to read my entries.

I even interacted with some of you outside of this blog, via email and voice chats.

I could see that some of you had similar problems and worries. And I was really happy that I could provide some more details of my experiences for your reference.

These interactions gave me the most sense of achievement.

Almost total strangers (I still do not know who you are) are willing to read my words and then willing to share a bit about their lives and willing to listen to my experiences.

We are in a way “touching” each others’ lives.

I think this is wonderful!

Photo by Tomasz Frankowski on Unsplash

5.The Future

Going forward, I totally plan to continue this blog with the current cadence.

And through the statistics Google provided, I learned a little bit about you, my readers, as a whole also.

It seems that posts related to Money and Career are most popular, especially Money, especially those that said I was “burned” in my investments…

Haha…

While I will try to write more about those topics, I think this blog will continue being mainly about my experiences, not only on investments and career.

And for sure, I do not want to be more “burned”…Haha!

Thank you guys for staying with me. I hope you continue staying with me.

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

6.The Ads

Also, do click the adds if you see anything interesting. It is going to help me too.

Thank you!

Till next time!