Two years ago, on 12/25/2014, I wrote my first blog post. And after 170+ posts I'm still here, writing.
My first year was depressing. I hardly got any visitors. I remember that on average I was getting about 5-10 visitors a day. Like anyone, I wanted my traffic to increase, but I didn't take any marketing actions on it. I avoided using catchy headlines, nor did I use popular keywords.
I didn't have a strategy. I simply started writing and sharing what I was learning. My only requirement to write a post was "Will this post help someone?"
After a year or so, my blog traffic started to increase. I remembered being so happy when I started getting 40-50 visitors a day. By this time I had written over 100 articles, but I had never received a comment on any of my posts. The day that I received a comment I was kind of excited.
It makes me happy to see that after two years of writing and sharing my knowledge, my blog is getting more traffic. On average about 1,600 visits a month. To some of you these numbers may be insignificant, but keep in mind that when I started, I was getting about ten visitors a day.
So why did I start writing?
Three and a half years ago I was developing a game engine in obscurity. I was learning a lot from this project, and I wanted a way to express myself and let people know about my project.
I am not a social media person. And the thought of posting a picture of me working on the game engine either on Twitter or Instagram didn't go well with my personality.
Around this time, I was reading the book Show your work. Which stated the following points among others:
- You don't have to be a genius
- Think process, not product
- Teach what you know
These three points encouraged me to show off my game engine. I realized that I didn't have to be a genius on game engine development to start writing about it. It made me understand that you can inspire others by showing the process of a project. And it made me realize that the whole point of social media is to educate and inform others, not to share what you ate this morning.
So I started writing about Computer Graphics, Programming and Game Engine Development.
These two years have not been easy. Many times I wanted to quit writing and shut down this blog. But I am so tired of quitting that I force myself to keep writing.
So if you want to start a blog, go for it. Don't be afraid to share your knowledge, even if you are not an expert in your field. I was not an expert when I started but I have written plenty of articles on Game Engine Development, C++ and OpenGL.
If your project is not ready to be shared, don't wait. Share it anyways. Write about the process. Someone out there will be interested in what you are doing. I began sharing the process of the game engine when the engine was a piece of nothingness.
Below is a timeline of the game engine process.
And finally teach what you know. Writing NOT Coding helped me become fluent in game engine development. If you can't teach it, then you don't understand it.
Thanks for reading.
