I originally started blogging to help me do my job better. Money was never the reason. In fact, back in those days earning money from blogging wasn’t even a consideration – there was just no way to do it.

Where does the tech guy go for help?

I had worked in a number of different companies and was often the only “technology person” on site. It made sense to work this way, at the time, as the companies I typically worked for were not technology companies. As a result I spent a lot of time being the last person in the line of people to ask. If you ever saw the movie “Bugsy Malone” – I was Shorty.

Going online occurred to me one evening whilst trying to resolve an issue that, quite frankly, I had no idea of how to resolve. I reached out to a community, on AOL, and it paid off and I got the problem resolved. Following on from there I found I was able to help resolve a few technical issues others were having. It seemed I wasn’t the only IT person working alone into the night after all. By helping me get problems resolved quicker, and understand what was going on in my industry, I found I could connect with people who were experiencing similar things to me.

Blogs weren’t called blogs back then

My first adventures online weren’t even called blogs. They were forums and news sites. I was doing my long outstanding degree with the Open University and found that whilst I enjoyed the learning and writing process the pressure, tied with work demands, was very high and blogging gave me a new creative outlet so I welcomed it.

A few years later I met my partner, on a blind date, and then I switched jobs so my life changed quite a bit. Strangely enough, the job I got was literally next door to my old place. I had no idea at the time about this and had to drive 30 miles to an interview at an agency. What a surprise when I found out where it was. Anyway, I was on my own again managing information technology and blogging came to the rescue.

After trying different types of writing I found I could really do with collating all my how-to’s, and tips, together in a central place. This was largely so I could search and find them easily. So, I started a Blogger site called “The IT Manager’s Journal” as a place for me to concentrate my writing. Things started to go well but a new, business-oriented site, appeared with almost the same name “IT Manager’s Journal” which was confusing for people so eventually I changed the name of my site to what it is today jasonslater.co.uk. After all, I don’t expect anyone will want me to change my name any time soon.

Keeping the blog on focus

After a while, I noticed I was writing quite a lot about technology but also an increasing amount about my retro interests so I started another site in order to keep the two areas of interest distinct. For the retro site I even started paying outside writers who expressed interests in working on the site. As a result I didn’t make any money but I was paying a lot out and I also found out that paying, and trusting, people for original and exclusive content didn’t always work out that way.

New interests emerged and new sites were created. And so it went on. At one time I was running 14 blogs at the same time. There was my main technology blog, a retro blog, a quiz style blog, a novel writing site, online gaming site, a thought of the day, a couple of comic strips, and so on. This couldn’t go on as I hadn’t got the money to pay for all the bandwidth or domain renewals needed. So, one day I made a decision – all these sites had to be pruned.

Bringing the number of sites down I tried to find a way of improving the hosting, as bandwidth requirements were getting higher and higher, and performance was getting worse and worse. I needed a better server. Virtual Private Servers were a new thing so I opted for that, and then moved to dedicated servers with a well-known hosting provider, but I needed a way of paying for it and this was when I first started running a few ads.

Paying the price of blogging

I had been dead set against advertising up until this point but frankly money was tight enough and I couldn’t justify spending any more money without anything to show for it. It was becoming a money pit. Frankly, when everything was balanced out I was earning peanuts, somewhere between £1-£2 per day, on average. The traffic would tail off towards the weekend and hit rock bottom and there wouldn’t even be enough to cover the cost of hosting.  I was never going to make money blogging the way I was doing it so I had a long hard think. I was spreading myself too thinly and not focusing on what was important to me – I was losing my passion.

So, I refocused. I have a passion for technology and I also love writing. I focused my time on improving my writing, and technology knowledge.

I kept going, and one thing led to another, and here I am writing this article as a full-time blogger.

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