Blogging Success Story – iHackintosh.com

Lets meet Vinay Prashar from Chandigarh, India who runs a blog called as iHackintosh which is a technology related blog offering stuff for the geeks. The domain was registered on 14th jan 2009 and its already getting him a good amount of success and you can take this as a example when you are getting into blogging and live examples like these can surely help you out. He recently emailed me because he got a lot of inspiration from my blog’s articles and how he started.

Here is the email which was sent by Vinay to me recently :

Reason why i mailed you is to say you thank you. First time when i read your About page on Amitbhawani.com i decided to give myself a chance in this amazing field. Technically i m from electronics background but i m a quick learner so i started with blogspot and later in mid jan i purchased my own domain http://ihackintosh.com and this domain changed my life completely. Now i have decided to be a full time blogger. My site gets a huge success in very short time like PR4 in very first page rank update while domain was only 75 days old. Today we are serving about half million page views monthly but i m not happy with the monetization. I m using Adsense + Infolinks as you published infolinks earnings are at a lower circuit but my adsense eCPM is doing well this month.

First time i encountered with your blog when i was googling about wireless data cards and gets the required information from your blog later again when i was googling something about iPhone again i lended on your blog then i bookmarked your blog and reads a lot of article including your about page. The section How it started inspired me to do something big with my little blog as i was not aware of the professional side of blogging. Then after doing a lot of research i started my own blog on iPhone, OSX, OSX86, Linux and Windows.

As i said earlier technically i m from electronics back ground as i m pursuing my b.tech in elex & comm. so it was very difficult for me to understand these web, wordpress, blogspot jargons. With little worries i started my blog and gets a huge response in such a short term for e.g.

Blog launched 15 jan’09
first 100 visits/day 17 jan’09
first 1000visits/day 27 jan’09
first 5000 visits/day 28 jan’09

I think this is the best start for a noobs like me

On 2nd april when google revised their page rank i received PR4 (PR2 my expectations) i was wondering without any seo knowledge, any technical knowledge how i acheived this later i realized this is the result of my hard work and genuine work. In such a short time my blog was featured on many big sites including Gizmodo last week. Today we are serving more than 18k pageviews daily. The blogs i followed SEO blog, Labnol and ofcourse yours the most. Something i learned is do creative and do genuine. Never make a blog for money just make a good blog and blog will make money itself.

Your about page is very inspiring every one wants to make money from home and you sets a legendary example. Like you i was also attracted by those work from home and google kit ads etc. Thank god i have never purchased it. Now i m in final week of my b.tech but i haven’t any worries for a job as i m earning almost double what campus placements offers me.

The problem is that with 4 lakh pageviews last month i earned only 600$ from adsense and infolinks. This month adsense is doing very well but infolinks goes down so i m thinking to get more revenue. Can you suggest me where can i sell reviews and banners etc. or how to get direct advertisers. Now i decided to do a full time blogging job so now i m more concerned about monetization of my blog. Also i m looking to grow it almost triple by the end of year.

Here are the list of some of your post that helps me most.

Increase Online Revenue – The Most.
How to Blog – One in my bookmark list.
How to Start Blogging – The best with a lot of guides.
Blog History & Stats – The inspiring one

Suggestions for iHackintosh :
Since the website is already getting good number of visitors, i would recommend you to check out with the different CPM Programs like Tribal fusion which can for sure add up a good amount of extra money and help you monetize the blank areas of your website especially the sidebar or the header section. Another option is checking our Buysellads.com which is a network where you can try to sell our some of your unsold inventory on your website and get paid through paypal.com

After looking in the adsense stats i found that you have a less CTR on your adsense ads and for this i would recommend you to use Adsense Injection Plugin and place ads on the best location which gets highest clicks, after checking these things through heat maps tools like crazyegg. Also i would recommend you to use darker colours for your incontent link ads which would get better CTR and try to maintain those ads till 8 links by the time you gain good number of readers. Since your blog has been listed on some big websites, if possible post a article discussing about it by making your readers understand that you have a quality blog which was linked by many people and giving them subscription links if they like your content.

Implement adsense on the search pages if not use the adsense for search. Try to use only 1 type of search on your website which may be the adsense paid one or else the inbuilt wordpress search with ads shown above/below the search results. Add some good subscription options to your readers where they can subscribe and visit your website regularly. I would suggest you to continue adding content to your blog till this year end and focus less on advertisements till it reaches the top and by that time you will anyway make good amount of money with ppc ads itself.

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