How to Build a Tech Entrepreneurship Blog with Sramana Mitra

I started blogging on Technology Entrepreneurship in April 2005. The Internet was different then. There was no Smartphone. Social Media was just starting. Facebook and LinkedIn were new concepts.

Today, in 2021, building and monetizing a Technology Entrepreneurship Blog requires a very different strategy than the one I started with.

In this course, I will lay out a fully fleshed out roadmap of how to do so with contemporary tools.

Blogging is hard. It takes immense discipline to keep a readership engaged and interested over a long period of time.

However, there are many benefits to blogging, of which, two are of particular significance.

The first: Adding value to a broader community is extremely rewarding.

The second: Personal branding as a thought leader and a community leader is both a valuable career asset, and an immensely enjoyable experience.

I am recording this lecture in my seventeenth year of blogging.

The strategy that has made me successful is not going to be your strategy.

You have modern tools at your disposal that did not exist when I started.

In fact, some of the tools I will point you to have only become available this year, in 2021.

However, I will draw from my experience to give you as precise a strategy as possible so that you can build something consequential with a reasonable degree of predictability.

Let’s get started.

Why are you doing this?

I started blogging because I love to write, and I have a lot of opinions on all sorts of topics. I love entrepreneurship. I have always been passionate about entrepreneurship development, ecosystem building, entrepreneurship education, incubation, and acceleration. I have a love for Development Economics and have always viewed entrepreneurship as an important tool for economic development.

I also love to teach. I have insider track access to Silicon Valley and many technology ecosystems around the world. I wanted to bring all this to a large readership and democratize access to the knowledge that I have had the privilege of gaining.

My journey with writing a technology entrepreneurship blog is very different from that of TechCrunch, for example, which focuses primarily on News, and more specifically on funding news.

You have to ask yourself why you want to write a technology entrepreneurship blog.

Let me explore some possibilities and personas.

Perhaps you are a professor of entrepreneurship and you want to communicate with your students.

Perhaps you are an experienced entrepreneur and you want to disseminate knowledge about what you have learned in your own journey.

Perhaps you are from a part of the world that is not as far along in its entrepreneurship ecosystem development effort, and you want to contribute to building that ecosystem. This, by the way, resonates with me, because I played a big role in developing India’s entrepreneurship ecosystem. You can read about that journey here.

Perhaps you are an aspiring entrepreneur, and you want to learn through this process, as you think through your options.

In any case, this is a soul searching exercise.

Find your mission.

And then position your blog.

What does that mean?

It means, fundamentally, who is your reader?

Where does (s)he live?

What is (s)he trying to get out of reading your blog?

Let’s do an example.

Let us say you are trying to build an entrepreneurship ecosystem in the Northeastern states of India like Assam, Arunachal, Manipur, etc.

Or in Ghana.

Your readers are aspiring entrepreneurs who are trying to learn how to build businesses and all the nuances thereof.

Your content needs to be aligned with this agenda.

It is very hard to be all things to all people.

But if you position precisely, you can mean something to a segment of people who would come to love you.

That is worth its weight in gold.

What platform should you write on?

When I started, most of us early bloggers were writing on WordPress.

I set up my own domain (sramanamitra.com) and built my site around WordPress.

Today, you have many more options.

LinkedIn has created its publishing platform and you can publish your blog on it.

Medium and Quora are some other options.

I have had a unique experience with LinkedIn that I will share with you.

Around 2013, LinkedIn launched its Influencer platform. It invited a small number of people to start publishing opinion pieces.

My first major piece that took off on LinkedIn was Talented Women: Please Do NOT Quit. It had about 350,000 views and 1200 comments. It was controversial, hotly debated.

It was the beginning of my close relationship with LinkedIn.

In December 2015, LinkedIn named me as one of their Top 10 Influencers. Bill Gates was No. 1. Richard Branson was No. 2. I was No. 10.

Today, I have a very large following, and also multiple Newsletters [Best of Bootstrapping, Cloud Stock Analysis, Colors] through which I engage a large audience.

LinkedIn has greatly enhanced their platform, and I would have no reservation in recommending that you start your blogging journey on LinkedIn.

Medium and others can also be very good starting points.

And WordPress remains a very reasonable choice as well.

Please note, your platform strategy should take into account your monetization strategy.

If you want to monetize with advertising revenue, an extremely difficult agenda, you may want to have your own domain with a WordPress or comparable platform powering it.

If, on the other hand, you want to monetize with affiliate revenues, a better model, you can start on any of the platforms mentioned above.

In general, though, I am a fan of having a site on your own domain.

Please keep that option open.

What should you write about?

If you look at my blog, I write about technology businesses. That is what I know about. That is what I care about. That is what I am passionate about.

I don’t pontificate about things that I don’t know much about. Within my domain of expertise, my writings are considered high value because of their depth of analysis.

Bottomline, write about things where you can be credible.

Let’s go back to our example earlier:

Let us say you are trying to build an entrepreneurship ecosystem in the Northeastern states of India like Assam, Arunachal, Manipur, etc.

Or in Ghana.

Your readers are aspiring entrepreneurs who are trying to learn how to build businesses and all the nuances thereof.

Your content needs to be aligned with this agenda.

A great starting point for this audience could be writing about various aspects of building a business.

We have published a large number of courses based on the 1Mby1M methodology on Udemy.

You could do those courses and write about topics I have dealt with in those courses.

This, in fact, gives you a perfect segue into monetization through an affiliate partnership with Udemy.

Let us say, you write about Bootstrapping. There are multiple 1Mby1M courses on Udemy on the subject. You can write numerous derivative posts based on them. And you can, then, seamlessly monetize through affiliate commissions by selling those courses.

In addition, you want to write about your local ecosystem. About the nuances of the issues faced by entrepreneurs within your community.

When I put developing the Indian ecosystem as a primary agenda of my blog, I wrote about the need for Indian entrepreneurs to focus on building products, not just services businesses. At the time, India was largely an IT Services based industry. [Indian Product Entrepreneurs: Your Time Has Come]

You should also celebrate your local heroes. I have a strong belief that local heroes matter. I have always put the spotlight on local success stories in various geographies around the world and celebrated their successes. Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping by Piggybacking from Romania is a great story from an ecosystem that we don’t hear about much.

How would you make money?

The consensus, today, is that affiliate marketing is a good monetization model for blogs in general.

Advertising rates are just too low to move the needle.

Specifically, for your entrepreneurship blog, a viable model would be to build upon the Udemy-1Mby1M affiliate program.

Each of our Udemy courses costs $39.99-$89.99.

Udemy offers them at a discount from time to time for around $10-15.

Once an entrepreneur / aspiring entrepreneur discovers one of our courses, they will keep doing more. We’re already seeing this behavior.

10-15 courses per student is not unreasonable.

$100-$200 LTV per student is not at all unrealistic.

Udemy offers a 25% affiliate commission.

So let’s do some math.

100 entrepreneurs x $3 (25% commission) x 10 (courses) = $3,000 in potential revenue for you.

1000 entrepreneurs x $3 (25% commission) x 10 (courses) = $30,000 in potential revenue for you.

10,000 entrepreneurs x $3 (25% commission) x 10 (courses) = $300,000 in potential revenue for you.

100,000 entrepreneurs x $3 (25% commission) x 10 (courses) = $3,000,000 in potential revenue for you.

We also provide Content for Udemy – 1Mby1M Affiliate Partners.

You can become a Udemy Affiliate here.

Native commerce is an emerging trend, but the providers of native commerce are only working with very large sites (1M+ uniques).

Initially, you won’t qualify.

When you do, come talk to me, I will help you navigate to the right partners.

Should you syndicate your content?

I have had a lot of success syndicating to a variety of different media partners.

Seeking Alpha syndicates my Technology Stocks coverage.

I had a column on Forbes for several years that gave me global notoriety early on, giving me a platform from which to take on controversial subjects.

In 2008, I wrote The Coming Death of Indian Outsourcing and got a massive amount of hate mail for it. The CEOs of major outsourcing companies were calling me to discuss the article.

In 2009, I wrote Capitalism’s Fundamental Flaw that was on the home page of Forbes for a month.

In 2013, Harvard Business Review published my piece, How to Reduce ‘Infant Entrepreneur Mortality’, which led to several interesting discussions and several more articles.

In 2014, I wrote The Future of Education: 10 Trends to Watch for Xconomy. I have also syndicated to Small Business Trends and many others.

Let us say, you start your blog on LinkedIn.

You should absolutely start syndicating to the other platforms right away.

That includes Medium, Quora, etc.

In addition, high quality posts may be of interest to other higher profile publications.

If you have something worthwhile, we may be interested in syndicating for our blog.

All this would help you build credibility as a writer.

Someone credible endorsing you is of immense value.

What are the Search Engine implications?

I don’t believe in a lot of artificial gymnastics around SEO.

I have always written from the heart, with sincerity, with authenticity, with courage.

People linked back to my posts because they were good. Really good.

My site has authority because it has very, very good content.

We have published excellent content for almost 17 years, no small feat.

Doing anything for 17 years is hard.

Doing something with excellence for 17 years is extremely hard.

If you write good content on entrepreneurship, send us an email. We will include you in our weekly roundups, and link back to your post.

Especially if you’re building your blog monetization strategy around the Udemy-1Mby1M affiliate program, we would be very happy to help you build authority in the domain.

To be clear, I am not discouraging you at all from doing SEO on your content.

You should learn about SEO.

You should optimize on keywords.

But don’t write gibberish that is search engine optimized.

That doesn’t create credibility.

If anything, it destroys credibility.

Authority requires authenticity, not gimmicks.

There is no shortcut.

There’s another nuance I want to point out: network with fellow writers.

In the beginning of my blogging journey, I worked with other writers like Om Malik (GigaOm), Richard MacManus (ReadWriteWeb), and many others. We referred to each others’ works, discussed trends, industry developments, etc.

This is a worthwhile exercise.

How should you engage with social media?

Social Media is a lot of little things.

You need a Facebook Strategy.

You need a LinkedIn Strategy.

You need a Reddit Strategy.

You need a Twitter Strategy.

So on.

The simple organizing principle I would recommend is to go where your target audience hangs out and engage with them there.

Is there a LinkedIn group for your audience?

Is there a Facebook group?

A Meetup group?

A subReddit?

Sometimes, if you’re in virgin territory, it may make sense to create a group.

Engaging in social media groups that are very focused can be very interesting, especially when your readership is very small. You actually get to know people individually, and they share with you what they’re looking for.

For me, one of the most revealing experiences early on was that people constantly asked me for advice on entrepreneurship. Well, at the time, I used to make a lot of money consulting, and I charged $5000 a day. These entrepreneurs didn’t have the money to pay me at that level.

I knew about the need out there.

So in 2008, I created Free Mentoring Roundtables for them that are now approaching 600 episodes. Over 200,000 people have participated in these events. We work with entrepreneurs from all over the world. They are safe working sessions.

In fact, it was this experiment that led me to founding 1Mby1M in 2010.

You never know how things turn out!

How should you engage with your community?

Once you have a community, you have to make decisions on how you wish to engage with them.

Our Free Public Roundtables have been an excellent and scalable interface through which I engage with my global community. We see entrepreneurs from every corner of the world, including those in which ecosystems are immature, resources are scarce. Since 2008, when we started, I’ve had the privilege of working with entrepreneurs from Tanzania to Talin to Taiwan at these sessions.

You can either create your own online roundtables, or you can also participate in ours.

In fact, do both. We can collaborate. No matter where you are.

Before the pandemic, I used to also host an in-person weekly rendezvous at Cafe Borrone in Menlo Park.

Both local entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs from all over the world visiting Silicon Valley used to come to these. They were small, intimate sessions. Over the years, I have met entrepreneurs from Ukraine to Uganda to Uruguay in person at these sessions!

I would host meetups when I traveled to a city. I would do events with local organizers. In Chennai, at my first event with TiE, I met Girish Mathrubootham who pitched me Freshworks. The company joined our program in 2011, and went public a decade later at an over $10B market cap.

One day, after Covid, all that would return to the realm of viability, and you should consider those kinds of engagements and touchpoints.

Meanwhile, virtual gatherings work very well.

What user and revenue numbers should you target?

Be ambitious.

But be realistic.

Let’s go back to the affiliate monetization model framework with Udemy-1Mby1M that I discussed earlier.

100 entrepreneurs x $3 (25% commission) x 10 (courses) = $3000 in potential revenue for you.

1000 entrepreneurs x $3 (25% commission) x 10 (courses) = $30,000 in potential revenue for you.

10,000 entrepreneurs x $3 (25% commission) x 10 (courses) = $300,000 in potential revenue for you.

100,000 entrepreneurs x $3 (25% commission) x 10 (courses) = $3,000,000 in potential revenue for you.

As a starting point, getting 100 entrepreneurs trained is a realistic goal.

The question is over what timeframe?

It’s hard for me to answer that question because I don’t know how much time you plan to put into this effort.

Is this a side gig or a full-time career?

Do you have an audience already that you’re just now starting to monetize?

What I will leave you with as guidance is the following: Monetize as you go along. Do not wait to get to large audience numbers before you start to monetize. There is absolutely nothing to gain by waiting.

In many countries of the world, $3000 is a substantial income. These are places where the cost of living is low. Entrepreneurship ecosystems are poorly developed.

Ramping up 100 entrepreneurs with world class training would make a real difference in building these economies.

There are also entire countries that need entrepreneurship ecosystems to be developed. You could work with the colleges and universities in such places and train large swaths of ambitious youth.

And then, 10,000 entrepreneurs or 100,000 entrepreneurs are not unreasonable targets.

If you decide to create a blog and become an affiliate, please join our 1Mby1M Ambassador Group on LinkedIn where I will be offering more support and an opportunity to network around these ideas.