PC#2 - Blogging = Financial Freedom

There are many ways developers can make money online.

I discussed the 3 most effective ones in the previous edition of the newsletter. You can check it out below.

Every approach has its advantages and disadvantages.

And you can’t really say one is better than the others.

Choosing a particular approach may boil down to a lot of factors and personal interests. In fact, you might start with one and move on to other ideas as you diversify further.

However, when it comes to deciding your first step towards diversification, I believe blogging is the best bet.

Here’s why I think this way:

1 - Time & Money

We are all constrained by two important resources in our life: time and money.

When we have more time, we often don’t have enough money.

When we have enough money, we don’t have time to enjoy it.

The typical 9-to-5 jobs are meant to trade your time for money. You go to the office, sit at your workstation for a set number of hours, do the assigned work, and come back home. In return, you get a salary.

Of course, as you gain experience, you get more salary for the same or slightly higher amount of time. But the relation between time and money is still linear.

Blogging lets you change this relation to exponential.

Think of each blog post you write like an asset (just like a company's stock). You purchase that asset by spending some time (aka writing a blog post).

Then, over time that asset earns for you in multiple ways such as:

• Monetization through attention

• Bringing leads for your newsletter

• Creating authority in the subject matter

I have written around 350 unique blog posts. In other words, I have deployed 350 assets. Some of them are almost 4 years old. And still, they are giving me returns in some form.

In fact, now I am spending less time writing new blog posts. The assets already deployed are still doing their job.

In other words, I don’t need to spend more time staying in the same place.

2 - Capital Investment

I always think of two types of investments in life:

• Capital (stocks, real estate, or putting money in your own business)

• Time (building stuff that can make you money while you sleep)

Anything you do requires both of them to some extent. But the distribution varies.

For example, here’s a table that compares activities like freelancing, blogging, and SaaS in terms of time and capital investment. The last column shows the time and money separation provided by each activity.

Blogging requires a good amount of time investment.

But you can start with very little capital investment.

For example, you can start your blog with just around $50-60 for the entire year (domain + hosting costs). This is a negligible capital investment for any beginner out there.

After that, it’s a matter of consistently investing your time in the right assets (or blog posts). When you are a beginner, it’s easier for you to invest your time rather than capital.

I started my blogs part-time, spending just 1 to 2 hours every day after office hours.

3 - Building an Authority

Developers usually ignore this, but blogging is a superb way of building authority in your technical domain.

Over the years, I’ve got dozens of work opportunities just because of blogging. In fact, a couple of times, the company skipped the entire tech interview process to directly end up with the HR round because the hiring manager had read my blog posts on skills he was looking for.

Other opportunities include:

• Paid writing projects for tech publications

• Consulting opportunities

• Freelance writing gigs

Without stirring the pot too much, I’d dare to say that neither freelancing nor building your SaaS product gives you the same level of authority boost.

In fact, I’ve seen it actively discourages a lot of companies to screen your profile if you demonstrate a strong freelancing and product-building experience.

This is because they feel you aren’t going to give your 100% to the job.

The trouble with a 9-to-5 job is that it demands 100% of your cognitive capacity while paying you only for a few hours of the day. Very rarely do companies want you to share your energy in other endeavors.

If you don’t believe me, just look at the stance companies have been taking on moonlighting and remote work after the pandemic subsided.

In this regard, blogging tends to fly under the radar while providing a nice authority bump to your credibility

Conclusion

On a personal note, I’d like to mention that I also made the mistake of starting to blog after I had tried my hand at freelancing and trying to build a SaaS product.

Why?

Because I had no one to point me in the right direction.

While freelancing and building a SaaS are great diversification opportunities for developers, I believe blogging is the best start you can give yourself.

With blogging, you can build authority, acquire capital, and create more time to dive into other diversification options.

That’s it for today.

Have a great weekend and see you next week.