This is a great example of a non-planned, unstrategized, follow-the-market development that started off as a personal blog and turned into a breadmaker for years.
www.imateski.blogspot.com started with a few posts on just stuff, and a laptop repair guide for a dead, non-booting Toshiba m35. Before I knew it the blog started pulling in substantial amounts of traffic, and I decided to test and see how things can be monetized. First with Google Ads, then we actually made a downloadable ebook and create a make-do eCommerce platform with Paypal and email autoresponder.
This was an eCommerce platform on a non-existent budget. Direct expenses were zero, so with the first sale, the ROI was infinite. lol.
This blog became our lab rat, and we tested various landing page approaches, how images affect sales, how grammar affects Time on Site and Pages per Visit. We also tested pricing strategies and came up with some invaluable conclusions we used in our other projects. Most of all, this was a testing ground for the value of solid content, and the importance of writing style.
In these past several years the blog generated thousands of dollars in direct income, and many times more in experiment conclusions on on-site SEO, Landing Page Optimization, Product Description copywriting, Social Engagement and many, many other great nuggets of knowledge.
Time is at a premium nowadays, so the lab-rat blog is now left on its own, to rest from all those experiments.
