In 2009, I bought my first .com domain. Before that, I had run my websites on free domains for roughly 7 years. It wasn’t until 2010 that I learnt the most basic thing there is to learn about the economics of the internet businesses.
After having spent 8 years and after building large amount of audience, I realized that advertising revenue for Pakistani traffic was tens of times lesser, approximated to be 30 times lesser at that time, than American traffic.
It took me 8 years to understand that CPMs for different geographical locations are different. It took me 8 years of my life to really understand that ad dollars aren’t decided out of magic, but are based on supply and demand economics. That ad dollars aren’t chosen arbitrarily, but are driven based on competition.
I was young and dumb. I had no one to tell me or teach me. I couldn’t find right resources on the internet and didn’t know where to look. In hindsight, I wish someone could have told me. Someone could have trained me and saved 8 years of my life. I could be so much ahead of the game by now had I learnt that so early.
But I was on a dial up, YouTube wasn’t founded yet, and there was no community, guidance or mentorship available.
I learnt from my experiences. I got tired trying to do so. I wasted years looking for things with no direction. You don’t have to learn everything from your own experiences. While I know that you will still learn the most out of your own mistakes, I hope and wish that you learn more than me from others.