I started theSysadminChannel back in March of 2018 and so far it has been an interesting journey. While doing this blog I have been able to meet some interesting new people, I’ve been able to touch on topics that I haven’t done in years and last but not least, I find it super awesome that people are actually showing up to my site and actually getting value out of the written content and Youtube videos that I produce. So with that being said, I also thought it would be interesting to document the financial aspect of maintaining a blog and try and be transparent with what goes on behind the scenes. I’ll refer to this as our Income Report – Q4 2018.

Maybe in the future things might change, but as it stands right now, I am currently paying $3.95/mo to host my blog, with Bluehost. Now, as an IT Professional who does this type of stuff for a living, I could have easily setup a LEMP or LAMP stack and hosted the site in my homelab, but I didn’t want to do that for several reasons.

• I am constantly rebuilding my homelab (setting up and tearing down) and I’m not worried about 100% uptime.
• My lab is on older equipment, so some hardware can crash and go belly up.
• My lab is for testing.. I purposely try and break things to see what happens.
• The best reason is because I only pay $3.95/mo for web hosting. It’s super cheap and one less thing I have to worry about. I’ll let them handle the infrastructure.

Now before I get into the actual numbers, I should note that the reason for starting this blog was simply for documentation purposes. We all know as sysadmins, rule 1 is.. well now that I think about it, rule 1 is check your backups and make sure they work. But rule 2 is definitely document! It was never created with the intention of making money. I just wanted something to look back on in several years and be like.. “oh yeah, that’s how you do it.”

But as this blog has slowly grown it was inevitable that the dollars would soon follow. So while I am not making a gazillion dollars off this site, it at least makes enough to pay for itself in monthly fees.
 

Side Note: I have created several semi-successful entertainment websites in the past (think 35k Alexa ranking or 650,000 monthly visitors). So I want you to know that I have many years of blogging experience and know what kind of effort it takes to get that big. I also should mention that I do all my own work. Work such as theme editing, graphics (though not the best I’ll admit), SEO and everything else that comes along with maintaining a site. I would say the only thing i don’t do, is host the actual site myself since Bluehost is taking care of that for me. So with all that being said, you should know that this is not my first rodeo… just keep that in mind.
 

Stats and Analytics

Q4 2018 has been steadily growing traffic, yet at the same time dying out since it was the holiday season. Since my site is focused heavily on work related topics, it’s like a ghost town on Saturday and Sunday because no one is really looking for solutions for IT related problems. And to that, I applaud you!! It’s always a good thing to keep work stuff at work and get some good work/ life balance going on in your life.

Between October 1, 2018 and December 31, 2018, theSysadminChannel had a total of 20,310 unique visitors along with 28,434 total pageviews. Although it’s not too bad I could say that there is room for improvement. I averaged about 3 posts per month and had a whopping total of 9 posts total for the quarter. Let’s review those below in case you missed it.

• [Solved] SQL Server TCP Port Failed When Installing SCCM Baseline Media
• Deploying LAPS via SCCM | Local Administrator Password Solution
• Deploy Microsoft Office 2019 using SCCM | Step by Step Guide
• When To Use A Secondary Site in SCCM
• Get SCCM Software Update Status using Powershell
• SCCM: WSUS/SUP Failing to Sync with Windows Updates
• Get All VMware Snapshots using PowerCLI Module
• IE Emergency Patch KB4467691 Might Break Your Lenovo Laptop
• How To Add Local Administrators via GPO (Group Policy)

Now let’s take a look at the Google Analytics and Alexa Rankings.

Screenshots taken Jan 2, 2019

So as you can see I don’t have the most traffic in the world, but I certainly don’t have the least either. Since I am averaging only 3 posts a month, there’s not a lot of traction for growth. And that’s ok! I’m well aware that there is room for improvement, but overall I’m happy with the way things have been going so far.

So how much does all that traffic pay me?? Let’s get to the reason why you clicked on this article.

Income Report – Q4 2018

Here I am going to break down all the ways (and potential ways) I bring in that cash flow with the site. So lets see what that looks like.

• Advertisements: $34.90 (I just started placing ads on my site since mid November 2018.)
• Remote Support: $10 (Donation for support with figuring out a Powershell script. Thanks Mike!)
• Amazon Affiliate: $9.60
• Bluehost Affiliate: $0
• Youtube: $0 (Don’t have 1000 subs yet so I can’t monetize with YT)

Total: $54.50

 
If you are interested in starting your own blog, I’m in the process of creating a really easy, non-technical guide that will get you up and running fast (and really cheap too!). You can get started with only $3.95 per month, and if purchase at least 12 months upfront, you will even get a free domain name.
 

My Plans for Q1 2019

As much I would like to sit here and tell you I’m going to go all gung-ho on making posts and videos for our Youtube channel, I honestly don’t see that happening. I do have a goal to publish at least one post and one video per week, but with all that is going on in my personal and work life, I’m not always able to make that goal.

It takes several hours to create these posts and videos so I can’t always get around to publishing new content. And since I do this for a living, I have to find the right balance so I don’t end up getting burnt out from sysadmin overload.

 
Hopefully Q2 2019 will show me some nice (larger?) numbers, but that all depends on how hard I get my hustle on. I don’t necessarily want to focus on the income portion of the blog, but rather the traffic and the content. Content is KING! It always has been and always will be.

Aside from that, I am constantly trying to find ways to get the name out there. Obviously Microsoft forums, Technet articles and the like are the perfect audience for my content so I try to find more like it. I also created a Twitter account so I’m curious to see if I can interact with more people on there.

 
That’s it! So after all those hours of creating posts and videos I came out with a whopping $54.90!! Time to go make it rain!

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