--- title: "Reflections on Running a Blog for Two Years" description: "Sharing my reflections on two years of blogging: growing from 350 to 1,000 monthly organic clicks, accumulating 172+ articles, and documenting my traffic growth journey and the results of my experiments with AI-assisted writing." canonical_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/post/running-a-blog-for-two-years" author: "Mark Ku" author_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku" site: "Mark Ku's Tech Notes" date_published: "2024-11-03 01:01:35 +0800" category: "Learning" tags: ["blog", "seo", "content marketing", "writing", "growth", "experience"] language: "en" license: "CC BY 4.0" license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" attribution: "when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original" --- # Reflections on Running a Blog for Two Years Looking back to when I started blogging in 2022, my writing was really immature. Now, when I look back, I can barely understand some of my own articles. Over these two years, I've accumulated over 172 posts. My monthly organic clicks have grown from 350 to 1,000. In the first year of running the site, I got over 30,000 pageviews, and in the second year, over 50,000. Running a long-form content website is really not easy. Along the way, I tried using AI to write, but I found that AI-generated articles have a robotic feel and are hard to understand. It seems that for now, AI can only be an assistant. Technical or framework experience from a few years ago becomes outdated as times change. Keeping it all in your head is worthless; some of it will eventually become obsolete. My initial motivation was simply to document what I've done, improve my communication and summarization skills, and learn how to build and manage a website. ![Search insights](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/running-a-blog-for-two-years/images/search-insights.png)![1K organic traffic](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/running-a-blog-for-two-years/images/1K-orginal-traffic.png)![First Year](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/running-a-blog-for-two-years/images/first-year.png)![Second year](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/running-a-blog-for-two-years/images/second-year.png) --- ## About this article and its author Originally published on [Mark Ku's Tech Notes](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/post/running-a-blog-for-two-years) License: [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original ### About the author **[Mark Ku](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku)** — Software Solution Provider - 10+ years senior software engineer, now an AI Builder - Focused on large-platform architecture — North-American e-commerce, AI SaaS subscription billing - Combining AI Agents and automation to build evolvable product foundations ### Free tools built by the author All of these are free to use: - [Free PDF Sign Tool](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/pdf-sign): Online PDF sign tool — draw, type, or upload a signature, then drag, resize, and download. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded. - [VS Code Refactory](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/refactory): Refactory is a VS Code refactoring extension: 34 actions plus a 37-rule code-smell inspection layer with a Code Health dashboard, across 18 languages, backed by 534 tests. It learns your repo's conventions: where interfaces live, where DI is registered, whether 'use client' belongs. It ranks files by git churn × complexity so you know what to fix first, and hands any smell to the Claude Code already on your machine. Free to use, and your source never leaves your computer. - [DB-Kit Database Manager](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/db-kit): DB-Kit is a lightweight, cross-platform database manager built with Tauri + Rust + React. Manage MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, SQLite, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, Elasticsearch and RabbitMQ from one consistent interface: passwords encrypted in the OS keychain, SSH tunnels, full CRUD, a visual query builder, stacked multi-statement result sets, cross-connection data transfer and compare/sync, Excel / CSV import & export, visualized execution plans, ER diagrams, scheduled backups, SQL stress testing with p50–p99 latency percentiles, a 15-rule SQL review engine, Kafka message browsing with monitoring & alerts, a bilingual UI (Traditional Chinese / English), a built-in AI assistant (natural-language SQL, AI review and tuning advice) and the dbk CLI. Free and open source (MIT), with installers for Windows, macOS and Linux. - [VS Code Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/super-mermaid): Super Mermaid is a VS Code extension for beautiful Mermaid diagrams out of the box: auto-colored live preview, mouse pan & zoom, high-res PNG / SVG export, 21 templates and multiple themes. Free and open source (MIT). - [React Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-super-mermaid): react-super-mermaid is an open-source React component library: render beautiful Mermaid diagrams with a single , with built-in colorful / sketch themes, pan & zoom, in-diagram search, and high-res SVG / PNG export. Lightweight, SSR-safe, fully typed. Free and open source (MIT). - [Jira / Confluence Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/jira-super-mermaid): An Atlassian Forge app: write Mermaid syntax directly inside a Jira issue or a Confluence page and get flowcharts, sequence diagrams, state machines and Gantt charts. 11 diagram types, SVG / PNG export, light and dark themes, full CJK support. Runs on Atlassian: your diagrams live in your own site and the app calls no third-party service. Free, coming soon to the Atlassian Marketplace. - [Mermaid Live Preview](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/mermaid-preview): Write Mermaid in your browser, see it render instantly, and share the whole diagram as a single link. No sign-up, nothing uploaded to a server, and mermaid.live share links work as-is. - [React Intl Phone Number](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-intl-phone-number): react-intl-phone-number is an open-source React component: framework-agnostic and antd-free, with E.164 in/out, a searchable flag / country-code dropdown, configurable validation levels (strict / mobile-strict / loose), themeable CSS, and i18n — phone logic powered by google-libphonenumber. Lightweight and fully typed. Free and open source (MIT). - [Uptime Kuma Cluster](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/uptime-kuma-cluster): Turn single-node Uptime Kuma into a highly available cluster: OpenResty + Lua smart load balancing, shared MariaDB state, health checks and automatic failover, plus cluster-management REST APIs. One Docker Compose command to start. 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