About this Post: The following post is from guest poster Rishit Shah, who completed his Chartered Accounting degree (equivalent to CPA in the USA) entire with his blog income. Enjoy the post, it has some good lessons for all of us.

In my final level of Chartered Accountancy (CA), I was interning at a CA firm and that is where I learned Tally.

I learned Tally from a Chartered Accountant. When I talked to my friends about it, they were surprised because they didn’t know anything about it.

It was then, it struck me to start a blog on Tally which I named TallySchool after consulting with my brother.

After that, there was no looking back.

But, the journey was not as easy as it sounds. It was difficult but it was worth it.

The Beginning – How it all started

When I started my blog, it was a real experience of blogging for me and it was the second time that I had started a blog after failing once before.

I started writing posts on the pain points that I had discovered while actually operating tally at my internship interacting with different clients.

What actually I was doing is transforming the knowledge that I had gained from the real world to the virtual world in the form of a blog.

For the first six months, it was like there is nothing happening at all.

But, I kept pushing. I wrote as many articles as I can within the limited time I had because I was also studying for CA.

And, if you don’t know then let me tell you that tuitions for CA course are somewhere between 10 to 12 hours a day.

Most of the times, tuitions run continuous right from the morning to the evening.

Whatever extra time I got, I used it to write the blog posts and creating videos about them.

It was at times, frustrating to write and seeing little to no results but I kept pushing it anyway.

On some days, there were literally 5-10 visitors and on some days, no one visited the blog. That is not a good feeling at all.

But, I was sure about the potential of what I am doing and I didn’t quit.

Roughly after six to seven months of starting the blog, slowly, the blog started gaining traction and people started noticing the blog and it also resonated with them.

After that, step by step, the blog grew and with that, the audience also grew.

The Journey – Funding my CA Course

After the blog grew to a decent sized audience, I started monetizing it because I needed money to pay my fees for the CA course.

The feeling of money coming in my AdSense account is indescribable. It felt like I was on cloud 9.

It was not in millions but it was enough for me to pay my tuition fees for the CA course and little more savings on the other hand.

I don’t come from a privileged background but the best thing my mother did was to give the highest quality education and that helped me a lot.

When I gave money to my mom for the first time, she was so happy about it. She blessed me with good wishes ahead.

As I was saving each cent from this point, I also stopped asking for money from my parents.

Every dollar that I earned, I started saving it and thoroughly used it for funding my CA course, side expenses and giving some money back to my parents.

For the first time in life, I was earning on my own and spending on my own. I am not bragging at all but it was an amazing feeling for me.

This journey of starting a blog is still on and the days have become more and more beautiful.

I have come in contact with so many wonderful people because of this blog and that is an added advantage.

I got in contact with one entrepreneur from IISc (Indian Institute of Science), who is working in developing apps and project management.

He is a wonderful person and I wish one day to meet him in person.

I also talked to a lady who was in her 60s and she shared her life experiences with me. It was very much elated by her response to life situations.

I actually learned quite a lot from her.

There were many other experiences from which I learned a lot. These kinds of experiences are the intangible benefits of blogging.

How You can do it What I did – 3 Actionable Tips

So, this was my journey of blogging and earning a decent side income from it.

I am going to share with you 3 actionable tips about how you can start a blog and begin earning a decent side income or even make it a full-time job.

Have practical knowledge about the subject – We all know you should be passionate about the subject on which you are starting the blog.

But, one important thing most of the people miss out is that you should have in-depth practical knowledge about the subject on which you are starting a blog.

When I started TallySchool, not just bookish knowledge, but I was having a great amount of practical knowledge about tally as well.

I had worked with different clients before and therefore I knew what exactly works in the real world.

I shared that knowledge on my blog and it was well received by the audience.

Think for more than one solutions – Often times, when we get a single solution to a problem, we stop searching for other solutions.

Although, a single solution helps, but having more than one solution can be helpful in many ways.

For my blog, I had different ways to solve a single problem. This helped me stand out from the competition.

As you stand out from the competition, you begin to realize that people gradually start recognizing you as an expert in your field.

So, having more than one solutions has many fold benefits.

Gain exposure of at least two different fields – Before I knew anything about tally, I also knew a quite a bit about blogging too.

If you have read at the beginning of this post, I failed at the first blog that I ever created.

That experience helped immensely in growing the second blog which is TallySchool and it became a hit.

Mixing the knowledge of both tally and blogging, I was able to create a unique experience for the visitors that no one else did.

Similarly, the more diverse your knowledge bag is, the more you are able to deliver it to your audience.

This was also very well said by Justine Musk, first wife of Elon Musk in an article shared on Business Insider.

“When you create something with knowledge about different fields, you will naturally come out with something that can stand from different angles”.

Conclusion

This was my journey about blogging and it is wonderfully going on till now.

In the end, I want to say one thing to all the people who are about to start their own journey or are in the middle of their journey.

That is – keep pushing and keep going on.

The world will throw everything at you but if you stand still and try every day, you will definitely succeed and achieve what you want.

I am not just saying because it sounds good, but I have experienced that myself.

I will be very glad if you comment down your experiences in the comments section below so we can all learn from it as well.