5-Years Experience — Learnings From Launching Two Digital Marketing Blogs

Stavros Theodoratos
7 min readJan 24, 2021

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Hello fellas!

In this post, I will try to share my 5-Years experience after launching two digital marketing blogs in the Greek market, which one of them climbed in the top 3 digital marketing news blogs in Greece in terms of traffic and visibility.

This article is a personal expression that aims to answer questions such as:

  • Can anyone make a lot of money from blogging?
  • Can having your own news blog help you find a job more easily or open new doors for collaboration?
  • Ηow much time and effort it takes to create a blog?
  • What mistakes can you avoid from the beginning?
  • Can a news website help you develop your personal brand name inside an industry?

To begin with, I’m Stavros, a professional digital marketing specialist with more than 6 years of experience in Performance Marketing, Digital Marketing, eCommerce, and SEO.

My passion for this industry, luck, and taking advantage of opportunities gave me the chance to work in leading Greek companies with great people and professionals.

But what was the role of having two of my own news websites in my career development and financial income?

How have these contributed to my career so far?

Let’s start from the beginning.

The Fulfillment Of My Military Obligations, My First Job & The Birth of Grow-Digital

It was March 2016 when I fulfilled my military obligations and started looking for work.

By then, I had worked as a junior developer and had already taken some first steps in digital marketing.

In other words, I had about 1–1,5 years of experience.

I knew I wanted to work in the technology industry, but I did not know for sure if it was information technology or digital marketing.

Ideally, I would like a profession that I could combine both.

Until I found a job, I was looking for things to keep myself busy, while at the same time I wanted to learn things that I could use in my first job (after-army).

I already had experience in web design/development and content management, so, I thought of setting up a blog where I could upload technology and marketing articles.

But I had little experience in both industries.

I thought that, in addition to having to search for information, read and experiment in order to upload an article (knowledge gains), it would help in the job interviews I would have later.

Thus, in May 2016, my first blog www.grow-digital.gr came into life.

It was a fresh blog with a beautiful design, built on WordPress.

It was a project in which I did literally everything on my own.

  • Logo design
  • Configuration of the WordPress theme to achieve the desired outcome,
  • I wrote my own code too (HTML, CSS, PHP),
  • Public Relationships (I tried to find guest bloggers, to create relationships with other known blogs, sponsor events, etc.),
  • Analytics/Tag Manager implementation
  • SEO (I messed it up here)
  • Look and Feel

and everything else a website needs.

At first, it was not easy.

I was alone and any attempt I made to find partners who would write content or help me with other things had failed.

So, I got into creating content. My main goal was to produce three articles per week.

As time went on, the traffic started to increase, and the page started to become more and more popular.

A small amount of revenue started coming from ads too.

A few years later, with the least time I could devote, the page managed to reach the top 3 digital marketing blogs in Greece.

I should also note that the other blogs I mention are not as non-profit as Grow-Digital, but are part of companies that maintain these blogs for inbound marketing reasons.

Having five years of experience in this field, I decided at the beginning of 2021 to create another blog dedicated to performance marketing and reach a more niche audience.

What’s the Outcome? Pros and Cons (Q&A)

Question #1: Did I made money from blogging?

The truth is that I have spent more than I have earned.

Let’s do the calculations:

Fixed Costs: 60€ (theme) + 40€ (plugins) = 100€ lifetime

Yearly Costs: 30€ (hosting) + 10€ (domain) = 40€

Human Labour Costs: Suppose my time costs an avg. of 30€/h * 3h/week (avg) = 90€/week = 90 * 52 (total weeks of the year) = 4680€

My 1st blog cost me around 4820€ per year (if I calculate my devoted time).

Or 40€ per year without adding my time devoted.

As for earnings?

I earned my first 100€ euros within 3 years. Oh crap ^^

Sorry guys, it’s a NO.

I don’t make money from blogging right now, neither I think I will.

On the opposite, I keep losing money every year : P

Question #2: Why didn’t I made money from blogging?

First of all, Greece is a small country and a small market.

The digital marketing ecosystem is not quite as big as in other countries like UK, USA, etc.

That means that the target audience is very small and the market too niche.

Also, I write in Greek.

There is no room for English-speakers to read my articles, neither I compete in SEO other global digital marketing blogs.

In addition, my full-time job rarely leaves me time to write articles or spend time developing the blog.

To conclude: Small market + very niche audience = minimum traffic = low earnings from ads and affiliate marketing.

Question #3: Did the two blogs help me in my career steps?

Yes, but not in the way you can imagine.

My blogs did not make me more recognizable as a professional.

Neither they offered me a job because an employer had read an article of mine, or was aware of the existence of Grow-Digital.gr and Performance-Marketing.gr.

But the need to create content combined with my willingness to experiment with everything I read, made me develop knowledge and skills, month by month, much faster than I could have imagined.

There was not a week passed that I did not read or try something new in the field of digital marketing and technology.

Whatever came to my mind, or was presented by the experts in the industry, I would go and apply it to my own work, or to my own systems.

This has helped me a lot in all my professional steps so far and continues to help me.

Question #4: How much time and money have I devoted so far? Have I regretted it?

I have dedicated a lot of time since I had to do almost everything myself.

There was also a lot of time devoted to learning new things, in order to develop the blogs (like Photoshop, Copywriting, Affiliate Marketing, etc).

When it comes to earnings…

I often think how much I would have earned if I had spent the hours I spent on the blog, somewhere else (ex. freelancing, outsourced projects, etc.).

But then I think…

Would have I learned the things learned so far that made me the professional I am?

I devoted time, it’s true.

But I did not redeem it directly for money, I redeemed it for rich knowledge and skills, public relationships, and experience.

And finally, no regrets!

Question #5: If I had then the knowledge I have now, what things would I do differently?

  1. I would have chosen from the start the theme I use now
  2. I would have spent less time finding people to help me in creating content etc.
  3. I would have invested more time in SEO
  4. I would have invested more time in creating partnerships etc
  5. I would have tried to create videos and webinars as new traffic acquisition channels
  6. I would have created another digital marketing blog in English and go hard for monetization
  7. I would not have made the 3,000 paper cards that I have never used (hell no)
  8. I would not waste money on ads. I’m a publisher after all!
  9. I would create better content that answers questions and is much more useful to some advertisers

Question #6: Do I believe that owning a digital marketing blog can empower your brand name inside an industry?

It depends.

If you are Neil Patel with more than 15 years of presence in global marketing industry, then yes. You can make money too.

If you are an 30-years-old digital marketing individual in the Greek market who writes in Greek for a total audience reach of 300,000, then ... I’m not so sure!

I have not yet seen it happen to me personally.

But the daring one wins!

In Conclusion

This is what I had to share from my five years of blogging experience around digital marketing and performance marketing.

I hope I solved questions and helped someone who is planning to create their own blog to share knowledge and skills with their audience.

As I like to say, it is nice to know that you have something of your own that develops through your own effort and you can express yourself through it.

And you realise it on those nice Saturday afternoons, when you search the internet with a cup of coffee to find the next exciting topic to write about. It’s not always about the money, it’s about knowledge!

Don’t forget to visit:

Find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stavrostheodoratos/

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Stavros Theodoratos
Stavros Theodoratos

Written by Stavros Theodoratos

Tech Oriented Digital Marketer focused on Performance Marketing & Ecommerce. Proud Owner of Grow-Digital.gr & Performance Marketing.gr.

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