It's been roughly 8 years now since I've been working full time as a data & analytics consultant. In these 8 years, I've worked on multiple tools & technologies. Now working on different tools may sound interesting, but it does present its own set of challenges.

Almost every other day, like any other developer, was scouring the internet for the resolution to the issues I was facing in my day-to-day project activities. Most of the time the tech gods would smile down upon me and I'd get the solution on the 1st page of my google search results. But on those bad days, oh boy. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I've been to hell and back when trying to look for solutions for things that may sound trivial, but are not. A couple of examples:

• Setting the cell height in the Excel export of an SSRS report.
• Known limitations of SAP Crystal Reports
• Maintain different character encoding in a single database

These things may sound trivial right now, but back in the day, I'd have given anything to find a proper solution, a tutorial, or even a simple blog post for the same.

You see, there are a lot of things that you can only learn by doing. There's no substitute for knowledge gained from experience.

The only way to gain knowledge is to share it. If I send out my knowledge out in the tech universe, I am bound to get knowledge back, that too in good measure.

I've seen many folks sharing their knowledge on multiple social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and GitHub, where they give you a little taste of the topic, and offer you their blog post if you need to satisfy your curiosity in detail.

So yes, having a tech blog would help me share my knowledge with the world and in turn, become a better developer in the process.

How do you become a better developer by maintaining a tech blog you ask?

Well, let me take you back to my college days and tell you a little story. Back when I was pursuing my bachelor's degree, I had a pattern when it came to preparing for my finals.

I would give myself an hour to research & learn a new topic from the syllabus. When done, I used to teach the same topic to my roommate, who preferred that I explain stuff to him like he's 5 (which he mentally was, but that's another story).

So in the process of teaching him, my overall understanding of the topic improved quite considerably!

So yeah, when you write & maintain a tech blog, you are essentially teaching or conveying what's on your mind to the potential reader. And you do have to dumb it down a notch as the delivery medium is all text and some images. That makes you structure your content in an easily palatable way and increases your knowledge on the topic.

Secondly, your blog audience will give you feedback. While some may be positive & some negative, it will also add to your teachings, both as a writer & as a developer.

There's no greater joy than seeing people benefit from your content

When you see that your blog is helping people, you are bound to feel a sense of achievement & satisfaction. Giving back to the community is vital and a good developer should lend their hand in whichever way they can.

There are a couple of hundred technologies out there, each with its different frameworks and caveats. How does one survive this jungle of tech and emerge to the other side victorious and unscathed?

Simple, by relying on the community support. Just imagine where would the tech industry be if not for Stack Overflow? The absolute horror!

Is writing a hobby?

Let me take you back to my college days when life wasn't so serious & neither was I. I had a non-tech blog, which I used to publish every fortnight. Not the most optimal frequency, but back then it was just a hobby. I used to write creative pieces of fiction and it worked as an outlet for the stress of academics & life in general.

Maintaining that blog, even as a hobby helped me with a couple of things:

• It helped me get better & my writing skills.
• It made writing a part of my daily routine, as I had to keep a schedule of at least 1 blog post per fortnight.
• It helped me meet & interact with many like-minded people online, feedback from whom helped quite a lot in my journey as a writer.

So yes, maintaining a tech-blog, will not only keep your technical strengths sharpened, but it will also help to turn your occasional hobby of writing into a strong passion. One that you'll truly like and enjoy.

Needless to say, it provides a good, creative outlet and a well-deserved break from those long hours of coding and debugging.

A monetary side gig? Perhaps!

When you maintain a good blog, you not only keep alive your hobby but can also turn it into a side income gig. Quite a few tech bloggers have successfully transformed their blogging gig into a well-paying profession!

But be warned, making money with blogging requires patience, good knowledge & a way of content presentation.

Once you feel you're set, you can leverage the below techniques to make money from your blog:

• Ads - When your blog starts to generate a good amount of traffic, you can definitely on ads to generate a constant stream of revenue. Better yet, sometimes, companies & brands reach out to the blogger for a sponsorship advertisement. While a sponsorship might not be a constant source of revenue, it is often a good way to get some instant cash.
• Affiliate Marketing - This may be one of the best ways to monetize your blog. You can make money in the form of commission by promoting certain products on your blog.
• Premium Content - If you think that you're an expert and can offer better value content to your readers, then you can also opt for a premium subscription model where you can share special content for your premium subscribers. This is a good way if you're blogging on a niche topic.

But do keep in mind that you need to generate a healthy amount of traffic to your blog to successfully make a decent amount of money from it.

And for that you need to:

1. Post regularly
2. Maintain the quality of your content
3. Learn about search engine optimization to help draw the relevant readers to your blog.

So now that we've talked about the WHY, let's talk a little about the HOW.

How do you set up your blog?

Well, believe it or not, setting up your blog is quite simple. Most importantly, you should know what you want to blog about.

For example, suppose you want to blog about Data Science & Machine learning. Good for you, but do you know how many such blogs already exist out there? Take a gander

So what do you do? You pick your niche. You narrow down to the topics where you think you can make a greater impact. Suppose, you are a master in descriptive statistics, which is a good area to get started. So you select that as your main blogging focus and proceed.

Now that you have zeroed down on WHAT you need to blog, you need to select WHERE you want to blog it.

Now this step, as with the rest of the process, is fairly simple. Nowadays, you can easily set up your blog on a variety of blogging platform such as:

• WordPress
• Blogger
• Wix
• Squarespace
• Weebly
• Medium
• Hashnode

All these platforms have their own sets of advantages & limitations. Wordpress, for example, is the most popular choice as it gives you quite a lot of functionality, but it has a learning curve. Other platforms like Squarespace are comparatively easier to begin with but don't offer a lot of functionality.

Premium platforms also give you an option to map your custom domain, if you have one, to give your blog another layer of legitness.

Lastly, if you're feeling adventurous, you can create your blog using a tech stack of your choice and map it to your custom domain and you're set!

Once you've set everything up, just get cracking and maintain a regular posting schedule.

Don't get disheartened if your blog doesn't do well initially. A lot of good things take time. Think of your blog as a plant. You have to constantly care for it, cater to its needs. Only then will it grow to a big tree one day and reward you with the fruits of your labor.

You may have to adjust your content, your posting schedule, and also your focus to cater to your audience. Once you start generating enough traction, just keep the momentum and you'll soon find success, be it emotionally or financially.

So here I am, on Hashnode, starting my journey as a tech blogger. Hoping to share my knowledge with the world wide web and looking forward to gaining 10x of it as well.