I have done this before, but that was a long time ago (5 years in internet time is long time) when it was relatively easy to make money from blogs. Not that it is impossible now but it certainly is much harder than it used to be. I think this should be a proper challenge, because I am trying to do something in one year that took me 2+ years to do in favorable conditions.
My Goal:
Is to take my ~8 months old site with average traffic and minuscule income to a $1000/month blog with at least 500,000 page-views per month.
The niche of my site is technology. Here are some stats as the site stands today:

As you can see from the stats screenshot there was one freaky month when the site did really good (and I didn't have any ads on it that time because it was a new site) after that I pretty much stopped working on the site till this December. The site has ads from lijit now, I am just trying them out (for the 2nd time), I tried them out once before and they didn't do much good. Now it seems to be doing not so bad, at least considering the size of the site. BuysellAds and Adsense won't even accept my site to their network. BSA said to come back after I have at least 50k page-views for couple of month. I think BSA is the right fit for my kind of site, but we will see as the site evolves and I get a better idea.
I don't do keyword search type of post. Or short "regurgitated" articles from other similar sites. I try (most of the time) to write from my heart with my own point of view. This is an exact opposite to one of my other projects I am doing (but not part of this journey thread) where I just make dozens of short blog posts, that site is just a test ground to see what happens, not a serious project like this one.
I also work well when I set small goals for myself. I call them "milestones". Here is a list of milestone for this blog i am hoping to achieve (I might add/remove milestones as the project matures).

What kind of update you can expect from me.
- When I reach my small milestones
- Something interesting happening with the blog
- Answering question related to site
Feel free to "poke" me for updates if I fall off the radar and stop updating.
My Goal:
Is to take my ~8 months old site with average traffic and minuscule income to a $1000/month blog with at least 500,000 page-views per month.
The niche of my site is technology. Here are some stats as the site stands today:




As you can see from the stats screenshot there was one freaky month when the site did really good (and I didn't have any ads on it that time because it was a new site) after that I pretty much stopped working on the site till this December. The site has ads from lijit now, I am just trying them out (for the 2nd time), I tried them out once before and they didn't do much good. Now it seems to be doing not so bad, at least considering the size of the site. BuysellAds and Adsense won't even accept my site to their network. BSA said to come back after I have at least 50k page-views for couple of month. I think BSA is the right fit for my kind of site, but we will see as the site evolves and I get a better idea.
I don't do keyword search type of post. Or short "regurgitated" articles from other similar sites. I try (most of the time) to write from my heart with my own point of view. This is an exact opposite to one of my other projects I am doing (but not part of this journey thread) where I just make dozens of short blog posts, that site is just a test ground to see what happens, not a serious project like this one.
I also work well when I set small goals for myself. I call them "milestones". Here is a list of milestone for this blog i am hoping to achieve (I might add/remove milestones as the project matures).



What kind of update you can expect from me.
- When I reach my small milestones
- Something interesting happening with the blog
- Answering question related to site
Feel free to "poke" me for updates if I fall off the radar and stop updating.