From Bay Area Daily | Creator Talk

To be honest, introducing myself always makes me feel shy and introverted.

1. Project Overview

The project is this blog, which mainly shares some personal favorite business articles, thought-provoking content, and some new and useful products in the form of short reading reflections. Starting from December 2021 to April 2023, it has been over 15 months, and I am the only one working on it. The current income is about 10 USD/month, mainly from Google Ads.

Currently, the main costs include domain costs (80/year), entry-level server costs (500/year), and operational time costs (about 2 hours per day on average). Without counting labor costs, it roughly breaks even.

2. Background Story: How did you come up with this project, and why did you start it?

Calculating from when I bought the server in 2018, this blog has been around for nearly five years. However, it was all over the place before with no clear direction. 【Wanbei Daily】had been following and stopped updating in 2021. After waiting for a while, there were still no signs of resuming updates, so I wondered if I could replicate this content model. Thus, I reused the server I had purchased, applied for a domain on Alibaba Cloud, and started trying to run this blog. Around March 2022, I finally got it running relatively stably using various plugins and free services.

The main idea was to continue what 【Wanbei Daily】did, and it would be great if it could earn some living expenses. Based on current information, 【Wanbei Daily】’s revenue should be between 500-800 USD/month, which might be the ceiling.

3. How did you design this project? How specifically did you do it? What platform/tools did you use to create this project?

The project was mainly implemented through the open-source WordPress blog program. The domain and server both used Alibaba Cloud services. MIIT filing was completed around December 2021, and public security filing was completed around April 2022. Theoretically, the current content is all operated legally. Of course, it’s hard to say for sure since there are more and more contents. As for plugins, the functions currently in use were completed using plugins mentioned in 2023 WordPress Useful Plugins.

Main functions achieved: automatic URL identification and redirection; link records clicked by IP and displayed on the frontend; old content automatically updated and republished; content synced and published to Weibo.

4. Tell us about the project launch process: how did you start, how did you get customers, and how did you receive your first payment?

For customer acquisition, initially, I mainly got some traffic by exchanging friendly links with websites. Later, I mainly got some traffic by posting website links in comments or answering questions on v2 and Zhihu. Then I activated and bound Google Ads, gradually earning some income.

5. How does the project attract new customers and retain old customers?

Because there is no direct feedback from users, I’m not very clear about users’ subjective thoughts. For traffic generation, I proactively left my website URL on sites like Zhihu and v2. On the website, I mainly used RSS subscription methods to achieve user subscription retention.

6. What does your project look like now? How much have you invested? What do you expect for the future?

Currently, it barely breaks even, and the cost paid is quite significant. I have bought three or four paid blog themes, averaging 400 per unit. Several authors stopped updating and couldn’t be contacted. The blog theme currently in use is a free foreign theme. As for plugins, I also bought a Taobao affiliate plugin for 1680, initially wanting to build a website similar to What’s Worth Buying. Although I achieved automatic article publishing and product article updates, I felt it had little value and turned it off. Since it was an authorized domain plugin, it became invalid. Later, I bought a plugin to sync with Weibo for nearly 800 because the domain changed. As for domains and servers, I have paid the cost for five years from 2018 to now, approximately 3000 yuan. So, calculating from buying the server, I spent about 6000 in total to get to where I am now. Looking back at the current state, I估计 it would cost around 1000 to achieve the same result.

In the future, I hope the profitability increases, and I can save money to hire someone to develop Android and Apple apps to reach more people. I also plan to try building WeChat groups, gathering some users so that when starting a new project, I won’t start from scratch. Additionally, I feel I’m not suited to create paid courses and content, so I plan to revive the newsletter that I have repeatedly started and closed to see if I can synchronize and retain more active subscribers and operate a channel similar to WeChat Official Account but more open.

I hope to achieve the same revenue as 【Wanbei Daily】in the future.

7. What have you learned from doing this project? Do you have any advice for others?

What I’ve learned is actually quite limited. I just rearranged and combined what I knew to implement this project. If I had to say what I learned, it would be to persevere more. If your interest is already related to the project and you can advance it casually, then you can persist longer. After all, after doing this for so long, I’ve only received three tips, totaling 23 yuan (because of platform issues, I can’t withdraw it), which has been the only positive feedback in over a year.

9. Which books or other contents have influenced you?

I’ve read quite a variety of books, and if you really ask me to recommend something, I can’t remember. If there’s anything I want to summarize, there is—Some Signatures I’ve Used.

Finally, an advertisement:

If you like RSS subscriptions, you can use RSS subscriptions;

If you want to join the sharing reading group, you can join the WeChat group