I had been posting my rants, stories, and shameless promotions of my own writing on my blog for years by then. Somewhere along the way, I had also started doing book reviews, even though nobody really seemed interested in them.

I did not mind much. My blog was less of a business venture and more of an emotional pressure cooker valve. I had plenty of pent-up frustration to vent, and writing helped. If a few people read it, great. If not, at least the words had somewhere to go besides rattling around in my head at 2 AM like loose screws in an old ceiling fan.

It was only while reading and posting about Umera Ahmed’s Alif in September 2018, that I suddenly saw a noticeable surge in traffic.

It was around September 2019, IIRC, exactly a year later. My brother was staying with me at the time while pursuing his master’s degree in Pune. One day, as I sat hunched over my laptop drafting a story, he walked in looking particularly conversational.

“How’s your blog doing? Can you show me the stats?” he asked.

So I did.

Even to my untrained eye, the spike over the previous two months was impossible to miss. The graph looked like it had finally woken up from a long nap.

“This is impressive. Have you thought about monetizing your blog?” he asked.

It was NOT impressive, not my my standards. Not that I knew what kinda traffic is considered “impressive”.

“Ummm…” I didn’t want to reply, because…

Technically, I had tried before. Some time earlier, during one of my random passive-income exploration phases, I had clicked around Blogspot and found a monetization button. Like any responsible adult on the internet, I saw a button and clicked it. That was the full extent of my business strategy at the time. Nothing came out of it, and I moved on.

But this time was different.

Inspired by my younger brother’s suggestion, I actually decided to do some research. I read forum posts, looked up requirements, and eventually posted in the Google Adsense forum for help.

Lo and behold, a few days later, my request was approved, for this blog , not the one on blogspot.

A few weeks after that, the verification package arrived at my doorstep, which honestly felt oddly official for something that had started as me yelling opinions into the void on my blog.

While the monetization process was going on, I also learned something important: the increased traffic was not just because of Umera Ahmed’s novel itself, although that certainly played a role. The bigger factor was that Alif had already been announced for a screen adaptation starring Sajal Aly and Hamza Ali Abbasi.

People wanted to know the story before watching the drama. And I had a theory on “why”, you can read more here.

Suddenly, readers who may never have cared about book reviews were actively searching for episode summaries, character discussions, theories, and reviews. My posts started appearing in search results at exactly the right time.

For nearly half a year, traffic kept climbing.

At first, it was because of the book review posts. Since Umera Ahmed was releasing Alif episodically on her website, there was always something new to discuss. Readers kept returning for updates, reactions, and interpretations. And then, when the drama itself finally aired and I started reviewing the episodes, things became even crazier.

That was probably the first time I understood the strange alchemy of timing, fandoms, and search traffic. Sometimes the internet ignores your carefully written posts for years. Then one day, entirely by accident, you stumble into the exact intersection of public curiosity and Google’s blessings.

This story is mainly about how and when I monetized my blog, but it has a very strong connection to Umera Ahmed and Alif.  Without that sudden traffic spike, I probably would never have taken monetization seriously.

And honestly, that period changed the way I looked at blogging altogether.

Before that, my blog felt like a digital diary with occasional visitors. After that, it started feeling like something that could actually grow into an ecosystem of readers, discussions, and income, however unpredictable that income later turned out to be.

There are more stories attached to this journey. Stories about how monetization affected the way I approached content, how ads would randomly stop showing for mysterious reasons, and how Adsense revenue for my blog nearly collapsed in 2024. And then came the even bigger decision: moving my hosting away from WordPress to something else entirely. I hope, someday, I’ll get time to write those.

And now, several years later, I think it’s time to review some of the “golden age” dramas by Umera Ahmed like Maat, Daam, Kankar, etc. I felt this was the perfect time to write about Umera Ahmed once. And once again when I finish writing about Zindagi Gulzar Hai, because that novel/drama was not just a story, it’s a phenomenon. But those are stories for another day.

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Want more of my trademark philosophy daily? Do three things, not necessarily in that order.