Developer before I was a blogger.. but I love both!

Just a quick note: I'm a psychology major... I was fascinated with industrial-organizational psychology, or more specifically, the workplace, and I had wanted to do something with it. I have yet to pursue my masters but hope to in the future. Anyways, after college and teaching English in another country for a year, I ran out of money, and returned home where I turned to a self-taught skill when I was a teenager: programming. Never thought I could do it for money, but apparently, there is a demand for it. And that is where I am today. One job led to another led to another.. and I'm just in a very good place right now.

So... I began http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com as a hobby. Didn't know where it would lead. Didn't really think about what it could be used for or what value people would get from it. All I knew is the value I would get from it: learning why people go to work (money or other reasons), what we can do to make the workplace a better place to be, and how we can get along with our co-workers better. Hopefully it is something I could use towards research when pursuing a masters degree.

Confessions of the Professions is a source for understanding jobs, careers, and the workplace. It started out as an outlet to rant about my workplace, my boss, my co-workers. I must've had a good 10 stories to tell and already written up before the blog even began.

After some time, I asked my family and friends about their jobs and tried to convince them to write about it, but they wouldn't. They only told me their stories, so I wrote them down as best as I could and I had new material. I then solicited on Craigslist and even paid a bunch of people on Fiverr to write about their experiences in the workplace. MyBlogGuest (http://www.myblogguest.com) and MyBlogU (http://www.myblogu.com) would also be extremely helpful in my efforts to solicit even more articles.. and then infographics, ebooks, etc.

Over time, it had gotten more popular.. and I began receiving dozens of emails a week with more companies and people wanting to be a part of it. I no longer solicit on any website. The emails just keep coming. I've gotten contributions from reputable universities like Ohio University, Florida University, UCLA, etc. I usually receive articles from their psychology, business, or science departments. I also get articles or infographics from businesses as well, usually from hotels and the hospitality fields. A lot of marketing companies use the website as an article distribution source. Everyone shares and it keeps getting discovered. I'm helping everyone out and they are helping me out. It has become a great community. I have over a dozen repeat contributors who keep coming back with new material.

It has been a great experience.. it's been running for almost 5 years now. I keep writing. Others keep writing. It keeps going. I have certainly thought about just stopping and no longer maintaining it, but then I get more emails, and I can't ignore them, so I just keep it going! I get to learn a lot of new information before its even released to the public. I have learned a ton about SEO and people in general. I've gotten to speak to people from all over the world including most parts of Europe, the Philippines, India, South Africa, Australia, and I think I even spoke to someone from Hongkong once.

There has been a ton of benefits to keeping it going: exposure to visitors. New information. Networking. Connections. Writing. Thinking in a mature manner, especially in dealing with people. Learning about new web design trends. Optimized coding. I also loved the email I got last week from an elementary class who was using the website for their project on learning about saving money for retirement. Random viral confessions. My average daily count of visitors is usually around 1,000 a day, but for about 2 weeks just last week, I was receiving about 10,000 visitors a day. A different article was going viral everyday. Unfortunately, I could only track down the source as Google, but I wish I had known where it was coming from and why. Sometimes, the website just gets hits from popular trends or keywords such as "unemployment" or "retirement" or even "webcam model". And I do make some money from the ads.. not a crazy amount, but it pays for the domain and the server.

The website is technically no longer "my blog" as it has become everyone's blog. I occasionally get to post my own articles, but I do give everyone else priority over mine. And I wish I could publish more than once or twice a day, but behind the scenes -- it would mean a lot of work to do more than that.

It has also made me learn and be more confident as a developer. I've moved the website from shared to optimized VPS to cloud server. If it weren't for the website, I probably would have never bothered to learn what "cloud computing" was. It is my baby, my first ever website that I pushed out to the public. Some weeks there will be no emails, and then all of a sudden, it's like everyone got the memo, and I'll get about 20 articles or infographics all at once. Definitely not my full-time job, but it keeps me busy, and I do it because I love it. Apparently, there are many people out there who also understand its mission too.