Leading blogger Amit Agarwal on building a global content business for over 15 years

In Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal, lives Amit Agarwal, the man who brought professional tech blogging to India. He is also the founder of Labnol, which runs Digital Inspiration, an award-winning technology and procedures website.

However, Amit prefers to be called a “tech geek” or a “tech writer” and hates the term blogger, he says. Your story Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma in an exclusive interview.

A solo entrepreneur in love with the Internet, Amit develops tailor-made solutions that use the capabilities and features of G-Suite to automate business processes and boost business productivity.

In fact, he has developed several popular productivity tools including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Its Google add-ons have been rolled out to some of the world’s largest companies and universities with over a million installations.

In 2019, Google awarded Amit the Google Developer Expert title for its G-Suite and Google Apps Script. Labnol has developed projects for Airbus, LinkedIn, Disney and even the United States Embassy.

Amit was also one of the early developers of a vaccine tracking tool, which he said gained worldwide attention.

Bharath building

A graduate of IIT Roorkee in Computer Science, Amit began writing about technology in 2004 when he moved to his hometown after working at a company in Hyderabad for a few years. And there was no turning back.

At the time, there were no technical or IT jobs in Agra. So, Amit decided to create a blog to showcase his technical skills. “At first it started because I wanted to do something in technology and there was no opportunity in town. So that was probably a way to connect with the tech audience, ”he says.

The idea was to showcase his work, but as the traffic to his site increased he saw that he had visitors from all over the world.

Adding that this growth also had something to do with its first-come advantage. “I was one of the first to blog,” he says, attributing the traffic to unique and useful content. But “consistency is the key”.

So how did it go, building a brand from a small town? Amit shares that he wanted to stay with his family, which is why he returned to Agra. Location, he says, has never been a barrier to his work. “It doesn’t matter where you are because of the Internet. We’re all connected, so that’s not a problem, ”he says.

The only downside he felt was the lack of like-minded people to have tech-based chats. “Sometimes you just want to chat about something over coffee, which is not possible in this city,” he says, “But that’s a very small inconvenience.”

A problem solver at heart, Amit tries to solve this problem by creating a local community of people interested in discussing all things tech through various endeavors, such as Clubhouse chats.

Host a one-man show

All these years, Amit has run Labnol alone. While agreeing that a team would probably have helped the business grow further, he is “satisfied,” adding that he never thought about developing a team.

However, this was not a conscious choice – he was simply “too busy with work”.

“I am not very commercial; I’m more focused on building stuff and getting it out to the public. I’m not very focused on marketing all of these things. So, if I had had this business penchant, things would have been a little different but no regrets again, ”he says.

While a Google search will tell you that blogger earns over $ 60,000 per month, he laughs and says it’s much lower. “These numbers are probably estimated relative to the traffic numbers of sites like Alexa, but that is far, far from the truth.”

While attributing his success to passion and consistency, Amit adds that passion alone is not enough, “because you have to feed your people, secure your future, etc.”

What motivates him is a mix of passion, recognition and sustainability. “If I’m really passionate about something and keep writing, it just gives me satisfaction but it doesn’t pay my bills,” he says.

However, if it was purely financial, he adds, it would have been very difficult to maintain, “because if you don’t like something you can’t do it for that long … there has to be a balance. “.

“I still want to work on my website and create something, and that has motivated me for all these years,” says Amit. It’s been over 16 years but he’s still as passionate as the first day. “I really like what I do. I don’t see it as a job, I see it as my hobby and it’s like getting paid for your hobby.

Content, consistency, uniqueness

According to Amit, he always focuses on how to create content that is useful for others. For example, he created a Google form to record and track his son’s studies.

“I found it useful, so I thought other people would find it useful as well,” he says. Google apps are its main focus because the company has a wide range of applications that can adapt to all technology workflows, he adds.

Sharing his work process, Amit says he usually goes through whatever comes to his mind that seems useful, adding that even though he holds a notebook to jot down ideas, he never seems to refer to them.

To people who want to start blogging or who are newbie bloggers, he says authenticity is key. Don’t pretend you’re something on the internet and focus on things you know and have expertise in, he adds.

With a focus on strong ethics on the internet, Amit says, “If you’ve been paid to do something, always disclose it,” as strong ethics will only help a blogger gain a loyal base.

Finally, be consistent and unique, he says. Speaking about his experience in blogging communities and seeing many blogging sites that seem to have been abandoned, he says success takes time.

“Probably the writer lost interest or there was nothing more to write in that space or there was no motivation to continue. So people are giving up on him, and that’s a really big deal. because success and traffic can’t be built in six months; it takes a long time. ” Amit sign.