The hardest part is getting started
I haven’t managed my blog for over 4 years. The final Ad revenue payment of US$88 was stuck all this time. Recently, I found out that you can request to cancel your Adsense account, and Google will pay out the last balance once you reach the minimum payout threshold. This gave me the motivation to start blogging again.
Starting fresh, I used the simple title “The first step is always the hardest” as the beginning.
Looking back at the history of writing blogs, it was around junior high school when I was obsessed with games. At that time, our home computer was very old and had almost no games to play. But at that playful age, even without games, I still had to turn on the computer every day. That was already very exciting for me back then.
Due to the above reasons, I spent most of my computer time chatting with classmates on instant messaging and browsing websites; as you can imagine, it felt quite empty and lacked a sense of accomplishment (at least others could gain achievement from playing games).
At that time, “Blog” was booming, which was very new and exciting for me. The first platform I tried was the hugely popular Wretch. When I created my account and opened my blog for the first time, I felt, “Wow! I have my own website,” and “Wow! I can even change the theme, so cool.” Coincidentally, my school computer class taught web design (Front-Page 2003 / 阿聖網站), so I focused on exploring features for my first blog—finding materials, playing with styles, and adding many “trendy” JavaScript plugins. However, the content quality was basically just nonsense.
This gave me a deeper understanding of the online world, which I was clueless about at the time, such as: how to find information, how to fix issues when plugins break, how to embed images, and so on.
Many resources were obtained from forums, which were very popular at the time. I was a typical lurker who only read without posting, occasionally replying with “Thanks for your generous sharing.” While browsing major forums, I discovered “free forums” where you could apply to be an admin and have your own forum. This was a level above blogging—being an “admin,” “admin,” “admin” felt so cool!
Building on the basics of managing a blog, forums offer even more settings to explore (creating boards/member permissions/plugin center). You can customize everything yourself, like entering a whole new world.
There are many free forum systems; I kept trying different ones. Some lacked features, some were restrictive, some unstable, and some had too many intrusive ads. The one I remember most is Marlito, which best met my needs and where I stayed the longest.
Meanwhile, the Blog was moved to “Youthwant Blog”; this was because Wretch started imposing many restrictions. Youthwant was just starting out, offering fewer limits and features that met my needs. This time, I actively managed the content, with 70% sharing useful software (similar to A-Rong’s freebies) and 30% sharing forum experiences (settings/bug fixes).
There are about 30 articles in total, with daily views around 200 people and a peak of 500 (which seems small now). The blog ranked in the top 10 on UshiNet, with most traffic coming from posts sharing useful apps. After managing it seriously for over a year, I became busy with 9th-grade studies and high school, causing intermittent updates. Later, I joined athlete training and left the blog unattended.
Due to the blog’s overly cheesy name, only a screenshot of the view count is shown.
Later, I created another Blogger where I recorded technical articles about programming problems and solutions; however, Blogger was difficult to use and lacked basic features, so I gave up after writing a few posts.
Later, I registered my own domain and bought hosting to set up a WordPress blog. However, since I had to handle everything myself—setting up and adjusting features—I couldn’t focus on writing content. As a result, my posts were sporadic. After the hosting expired, I didn’t renew it, and the website went offline until now.
Summary: The journey started with finding blogs very novel -> then exploring and mastering blog features -> then focusing on the essence of blogging - the content -> and finally sharing technical articles.
Became lazy, recorded less of the process, stopped reviewing and sharing, tasted the sweetness of ad revenue, and gradually drifted further away from the original intention—the simple passion to share with everyone.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/zuvonne/3738631215
Set a New Goal for Myself: Teach and Learn Together, Start Recording Life Again!
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Technical aspects: iOS App development, Swift, PHP, Mysql…
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Life aspects: work, photography, unboxing, Murmur, and miscellaneous topics
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Experience: Recently working on machine learning, starting from zero
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Story Aspect: Skills Competition Experience, Life Observations
This article is also published on my personal blog: [Click here].
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to contact me.
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