Starting a New Blog in 2024: Case Study

This post is part of an on-going series documenting the progress of my new blog.

Rather excitingly, 2024 marks exactly a decade in the blogging industry for me.

I started my first blog in 2014 - a health and fitness blog which I abandoned after 15 odd posts. It would be easy to label that first blog as a failure, but it was actually the catalyst that opened my eyes to the world of blogging, writing online and a future where making money from home was a very real possibility.

I went on to start my food blog, Fatima Cooks, the following year with the intention of sticking it out... And it's grown into one of the most popular online resources for Pakistani recipes.

I then went on to start multiple other blogs and websites - including the one you're reading. Up till the end of 2023, I had run a total of 6 blogs/websites.

But apparently, this was not enough. I'm as surprised as you are.

Inspiration struck me at the end of 2023 and I started yet another project.

And this time, I'd like to document and share with you. I considered sharing this with just my Blog School students, but then I decided against that. I want this information available for anyone who wants to read about it, learn from it and gain inspiration from it. When I was starting out, I gained tons of inspiration from other blogger case studies, and I want to contribute to that too.

So let's go! Come along with me for the ride as I share period updates on this new project, with all the ups and downs, no holds barred!

Disclaimer: I have two young kids, 4 other blogs, a business and very limited childcare options. Some days I'll get 4 hours of work done, some days I get none. And that's okay - I'm a huge advocate for slow progress > no progress. Please do not think of me as the epitome of work-life balance or a domestic goddess. Because truly, I'm just a tired mamma who's taking each day as it comes and doing what I can without pushing myself off any cliffs. Sometimes that means I go to sleep with a sink full of dishes, and that's fine by me.

Also: I use 'blog' and 'website' interchangeably throughout this post.

How I fell into starting a new blog... again

'Twas a cold and frosty December night. I was spending the holidays at my Mum's house in London. It had been an insane, amazing year of new ventures, growth and leaps both personally and professionally. I was supposed to be having some down time (whatever that means)... but I was doing some research to add to my '130 Profitable Blog Niches' document (which you should totally have a look at if you haven't already).

And that's when it happened. That's when I saw it. When I happened to stumble across something that blew my mind.

A Japanese name blog.

I've come across TONS of name blogs and websites throughout the years. Generic, all encompassing blogs with 10000's of names. 'Baby name' blogs are even on my '130 Profitable Blog Niches' list.

But I genuinely just never thought anything of them for myself. For others? Great. For me? Nahh.

But when I saw that Japanese name blog? I saw stars ✨ (and dolla billz 💵) flashing before my eyes. Sparks were flying everywhere. The damage had been done. I was blog-happy... again.

My mind could NOT stop thinking about the Japanese name blog. And specifically, the fact that I could do something like this too.

But not for Japanese names. That would be cool, but I have no affiliation with the Japanese language whatsoever, making me a misfit for such a project.

But a blog about Arabic names? 100% doable for me.

(Background info for those who may not know me well, I'm (almost) fluent in Arabic. I can't speak great but I understand both spoken and written Arabic very well. I may not be able to move to Lebanon and integrate seamlessly, but give me an Arabic newspaper clipping and I can hand you back a pretty good translation.)

Ok, so I fell in love at first sight with this idea. But... is she the one?

A database website... What's that?

This Japanese name blog was amazing. So well designed, well thought-out and the meaning behind each name was so thoroughly explained. I was awestruck and blogger-geeking it to the high heavens.

But at the same time, I thought 'Is this doable for ME?'. It had so much content. It was a literal one-stop-shop database for Japanese names. So many names. So many pages... One page per name = literally thousands of pages.

I felt daunted by the sheer volume. Like, 'yes, I have knowledge too, but how would I execute my idea in the same way this amazing blog had?'. How can *I* create a database of thousands of pages when I'm a 'traditional' post-writing, long-form-content blogger? How can I organise all my knowledge into something like this in the best, least chaotic way possible? This is new territory for me.

So I did what any sane person would do.

Which was send a gushing email to the owner of the Japanese name blog website telling him I was absolutely consumed by and obsessed with his website and can't stop thinking about it, duhhhhh.

But seriously, I did email him. I had nothing to lose, but guidance and a profitable blog to gain. I reached out telling him I loved his website and that I would love some direction on how I could create something similar for a different language. Very conveniently, he was on the same ad company as my food blog, Raptive, which is one of the largest and highest paying ad networks for bloggers, so I used that as a conversation starter, lol.

I didn't expect a reply. People are busy, y'know? They don't always reply to gushing fan mail. But he got back to me. And I was SO grateful he took the time out to do so because his short email response absolutely changed the gameeeeee for me.

Let me summarise his email in layman's terms:

• He directed me to the plugin he used to set up his name website - WP All Import. I hadn't heard about this before, and upon some research I discovered this nifty plugin allows you to create pages, literally thousands of pages, IN BULK ON AN EXCEL SHEET (is there anything an Excel sheet can't do?). This was a freaking huge turning point for me because it made me realise there's an insanely efficient way to get a large amount of data published for a project like a name website.
  
  
• He also shared what he does now to edit his pages in bulk, as a seasoned name-website-owner. I have no idea what tool this is or how to use it, but I know this knowledge will come in handy at some point in the future. I'll figure it out when the time comes.
  He also shared what he does now to edit his pages in bulk, as a seasoned name-website-owner. I have no idea what tool this is or how to use it, but I know this knowledge will come in handy at some point in the future. I'll figure it out when the time comes.
  
  
• He also very kindly shared his average income, which people aren't often transparent about. $12 RPM means he made an average of $12 for every 1000 page views. RPMs vary a lot between blogs, and as his email says, food blogs do tend to have higher RPMs (alongside lifestyle and travel blogs). This was such useful information to have, because it gave me a concrete figure from a similar niche to my proposed niche, that allowed me make estimates on how much I could earn from a blog like this, and thus decide whether the income potential is worth the effort.
  
  
• He also said he liked my food blog (yassssss).

His email response gave me the green light that I could create a name website without any fancy tools - literally a new domain, a free plugin and an Excel sheet was enough to get started. It took away that daunting, overwhelming feeling regarding the volume of pages and gave me the push I needed to approach a database-style website.

But then the next question came up... is 'Arabic names' a good, profitable, high potential niche? Is it worth my time?

How I decided this niche has potential to grow

If you've ever read any of my work or interacted with me, you'll know I'm really big on making sure your market research is done to a T before you commit to a niche, idea or blog. There's truly nothing worse than pinning hopes, dreams and retirement plans on a dead-end project.

After that email exchange, I spent a few days researching the Arabic names niche very deeply. No stone was left unturned.

I looked at other generic name websites, as well as other Arabic name websites, and what these websites were doing well and what they weren't - this is called competitor research. Additionally, I looked at their monthly traffic estimates on SEMrush.com to gauge demand.

These are the factors that helped me decide an Arabic name website does indeed have enough potential for me to give it a shot:

Factor #1: The general huge success of other baby name blogs

I looked into the monthly traffic numbers and saw that a lot of baby name blogs and websites were getting LOTS of traffic. I'm talking 100's of 1000's of visitors a month. The Japanese baby name blog guy I reached out to was getting about 300k visitors a month! All the Arabic blogs I looked at were getting anything between 50-300k page views a month. And to my amazement, some of these websites were very young. One website was 6 months old and getting over 100k page views a month! Those numbers are impressive, and this showed me this niche definitely that has demand and potential. I've always preached the 'slow and steady' nature of blogging, but this niche seemed to show potential for rapid growth!

Factor #2: High demand for baby name meanings

I went to town on this. I input tons of search queries into Keysearch, my favourite keyword research tool, to see how the numbers were for anything related to the Arabic names niche. [Read: How To Do Keyword Research for Blogs]

I went specific ('Arabic names starting with A', 'what does X name mean?'), I went broad ('modern Arabic names', 'best girl names in Arabic'), I went everything in between.

And the results were crystal clear: 100s of 1000s of people are searching for queries related to this niche: meanings of names, how to spell certain names in Arabic, lists of names, whether X name is Arabic... And so I calculated that if a baby name blog has 1000 names published on its website, and each name gets even 100 searches a month, that's 100k searches on the table! And I'm being extremely conservative with my numbers here.

Factor #3: Trends in baby names

There's a growing trend towards (i) unique names: people, particularly expecting parents, are spending more time than ever researching names, compiling lists to help them choose a baby name, making sure they find the 'perfect' name. And this is combined with a growing trend towards (ii) Arabic names in European and American countries - most likely due to a combination of more Arab/Islamic influences in the media, more inter-culture marriages, the growing popularity of Muslim names in European countries, and more. So these factors combined = a growing niche with potential to grow even more with time.

Factor #4: I know more than the average person about Arabic etymology

I've always said you need passion and/or knowledge about a topic to succeed as a blogger. It just makes the task easier, quicker and less likely to bore you to tears. Whilst I don't have a passion for baby names (my kids were named with minimal deliberation and have the SIMPLEST Arabic names LOL), I do love Arabic and have 8 years of education under my belt.

Now I'm going to say something very important here. Am I the best Arabic speaker in the world? Lol, no way on Earth! I'm NOT a native speaker and I will probably never be as fluent as a native. Does that discredit me from starting a blog related to Arabic? Of course not! There's a difference between accepting you know more than the average person, and being okay with the fact that you're not the world's top rated expert on a topic. You don't need to be a top rated expert to start a blog - knowing more than the average person is enough to help thousands of people.

Too many people hold themselves back because they think they're not good enough, even though their knowledge is not common, regular knowledge. Don't be that person!

Factor #5: There's no one out there doing it properly... yet

I spent a lot of time researching my competitors, specifically in the Arabic names niche, but I also expanded my research to look at Muslim name niches due to the overlap. And it was very clear that there's a gap in the market, i.e., competition was low.

Identifying how high or low your competition is is essential before starting a new blog. Lower competition = gap in the market = blogger jackpot.

How I identified a gap in the market

So here's the thing. There are TONS of baby name websites out there. I'm talking HUNDREDS. But here's why I am confident there's still a HUGE gap in the market for an Arabic names website:

• There's loads of generic baby name websites that go over the meanings of thousands of names in hundreds of languages, but all on a surface level. They don't go too deep in with much history, etymology or background information. Why? Because it's a lot of research to do for thousands of names, and that's even more difficult when you don't speak the language of the names. So the level of depth is missing. Plus a lot of these generic baby name websites don't have a huge database of Arabic names, just the most popular oness.
  
  
• There are also a handful of Arabic baby name websites. But, in the most professional way possible, they're not great. Almost all the competitor research I did showed me: incorrect meanings, incorrectly spelt names (in Arabic), claiming names from different languages are Arabic when they absolutely are not, and/or very thin information. Most clearly didn't know much, if any, Arabic. In fact, it was very apparent that most of the websites had just copied and pasted the same thing from each other and were regurgitating information they hadn't fact-checked.
  
  I present exhibit A:

I don't know what kind of parents are out there wanting to name their kid 'violent flower'. Perhaps they don't exist, because this name doesn't mean 'violent flower', it actually means 'violet flower'. But hey, no one bothered to check it before copying and pasting it from another website, so now we have tens of baby name pages all saying this poor name means something weird and worrying, when it doesn't. *bangs head on wall*

• Generally bad user experience. From poor layout, unclear navigations and outdated themes, there was a lot left to be desired. One thing I absolutely hated was when there's a name that has multiple spellings (e.g., my name! Fatima, Fatimah, Fatema, Faatima, Fatma, Fathime, you get the point). Many websites would have each of those spellings listed and it made for a very annoying user experience scrolling down pages and pages of the SAME NAMES. It felt spammy and annoying.
  
  
• There was just ONE competitor blog that was doing a good job of relaying correct information... but it's SEO was dead. Literally non-existent. No headings, minimal use of keywords, poor navigation... it was frustrating to see from the perspective of an SEO fanatic.

Based on the gaps in the market and my own capabilities, I drew the conclusion that yes, there is potential for this niche, as long as I execute it well. It's one of those jackpot niches with high demand, low competition that I conveniently happened to be very knowledgeable about.

The goal is to create the best, most comprehensive, accurate, and most user-friendly Arabic name website/blog on the internet that does SEO right. There's nothing like this online right now - and if that's not a gap in the market, I don't know what is.

How I'm going to create a large database website

So now that I've decided this niche is worth the effort to build, I need to figure out how I'm going to do it. This idea is nothing like a traditional blog, it's a database.

It's going to be a huge number of individual pages, one page per name, with a lot of information.

And as the owner of the Japanese baby names website told me, there's a plugin that'll help me with that - WP All Import. This plugin will allow me to bulk create multiple pages/posts by uploading an Excel sheet.

There's a name for building a website like this: Programmatic SEO. I will write a post detailing this more at some point soon. In summary, it's creating a large number of pages for a website in an automated, bulk manner, as opposed to manually creating them one by one. Many database-style websites use programmatic SEO to build their websites.

It's a very new concept to me (I didn't know anything about it 45 days ago, lol). And again, it's very different to all the other blogs I've worked on which have always been high effort, long form, image dense posts.

But essentially, all the same blogging best practices would apply to my Arabic name blog too, just the way I upload the information would be different. Headings, answering all my readers potential queries in one place, using the keyword + relevant keywords, internal linking etc... they all apply as they would to a food blog, a fashion blog or a family blog.

I just need to learn how to use the plugin, which will naturally take some trial and error. It's going to be a 'learn on the job' project.

My action plan for this website

I am a big advocate for messy, imperfect action. It doesn't need to be perfect to get the needle moving. And with that chaotic energy in mind, here's my action plan:

PHASE ONE: CREATING THE NAMES DATABASE

• Firstly, I'm going to focus on getting the database up ASAP. So that's boys names and girls names, from the letter A to Z, with all the information researched and entered in to an Excel sheet. It may not be as detailed as I'd like yet - but that's okay. I can go back to edit and add more information later. For now, my priority is getting the skeleton of the database up, which includes names, meanings, some basic etymology and Arabic spellings. This approach is ALWAYS better than spending weeks perfecting your work and adding every single detail you want before publishing it. Why? Because it gives Google time to index your work and start ranking you in the search results. If you wait till it's 101% perfect, you're only delaying your own timeline.
  
• I'm getting the database up in chunks, as opposed to completing the whole database and uploading it in one go. Once I've completed one letter, let's say 'girls names starting with A', I upload it. For a while, the website will be incomplete. And I know, that doesn't sound very exciting. But again, this is always the better approach, because it gives Google time to index your work.

PHASE TWO: EVERYTHING ELSE (for lack of better words 😂)

Once the database is up, that's essentially the bulk of the work done. I don't know how long this will take, but I'm happy knowing it'll be the most labour intensive part of the project.

• Phase Two is the time for me to start focusing on optimising and tweaking things. Remember, the starter database isn't going to be perfect, because the plan is progress > perfection. But my goal is for my website to be the most useful resource on the internet, so I will go back and improve things so it can become that.
• I'll start writing blog posts alongside the tweaking. Having a dedicated blog section alongside the name database is a big part of my strategy, because (i) blog posts attract more readers searching for things like 'modern Arabic girl names' or 'Arabic names that mean X' etc (all verified by keyword research), and (ii) in order to monetise with a lot of the better-paying ad companies like Mediavine and Raptive, you need a blog element to your website.
• At this point, I'll also focus more on the design and look of the blog. I don't want *anything* to distract me from getting the database up, so I am leaving this till Phase Two. Shock horror, maybe. But I am prioritising the tasks that will bring me blog visitors quickest - and deciding between a pale blue or sky blue background, or finding the perfect logo isn't it. Controversial? Perhaps. Efficient from a Google perspective? Yes.

My goals with this new blog [full transparency]

This is where I'm putting everything out on the table for you to pick apart, and it feels weird and a bit uncomfortable. But I know this case study won't be as helpful as it could be if it isn't 100% transparent. If I fail and all my calculations go wrong? You'll be able to see the whole journey and understand why it happened. If I succeed, you see that too. Transparency, ftw.

I have two possible goals in mind for this, and both are attractive, plus a third goal I don't love but I'm sharing it anyway.

1. Grow the blog massively during this year, monetise it with ads (Raptive, ideally) and eventually sell it whenever the numbers look juicy - realistically in 2025 at the absolute earliest. Did you know that blogs can sell for up to 30-40x their average monthly revenue?
   Let me draw up some very conservative numbers:
   ---- Page views based on my competition in the exact same niche, who gets the lowest # of page views: 50,000 page views a month
   ---- Assuming a $12 RPM (RPM: much money you are paid for every 1,000 views), as quoted by the Japanese baby name blog owner:
   ---- 50 x $12 = approximate monthly income of $600 a month
   ---- And if we multiply that monthly income figure by 30, which is the lowest average selling multiplier
   = $18,000.
   And this is the conservative calculation. I'm going off the lowest projected numbers of traffic and RPMs if I do this properly.
   
   
2. Grow the blog and keep it as a regular source of income. Just like my other blogs. Let it add to my monthly revenue. This is probably the most hassle-free option, because selling a blog seems stressful. But I'll be honest, it's not as exciting as #1.
   
   
3. Grow the blog and start some sort of product line that aligns well with it. For e.g., personalised Arabic name jewellery, canvases, digital printable art, room decor. There's a lot of potential here. But truthfully, this is my least favourite option, just because I'm a lazy gal and don't enjoy product-based businesses. But it's an option. And on the flipside, it may be attractive to someone who does want a product based business and would want to buy a website that already has traffic, which brings me back to dreamy goal #1.

Again, this sharing these plans is making me feel a bit vulnerable 😅. But I'm sharing them anyway, because I want you to know that not only can you dream big, but those big dreams aren't outrageous if you have a plan and can do some basic maths 😉.

3 lessons to take from this post

• Send that email, reach out to that person, seek out those answers you want. Yeah, they may not reply or help. But they might... and it could be everything you were looking for!
  
  
• Strike when the iron is hot: I am SO BIG ON THIS. If you sit on your amazing ideas for weeks and months, you lose that fire. And it shows. It shows in your motivation, in your speed, in your task prioritisation. Start moving when you feel that dopamine and adrenaline running through your veins (subject to positive results from keyword and market research). Planning and researching is great, but after a certain point it becomes counter-productive. Go get dat bread whilst the bakery is still open (I'm out here starting new blogs and idioms too, apparently).
  
  
• Give those whacky, off-brand ideas a chance: I did a recent poll on my IG page asking people to guess what my new blog is about, and out of almost 100 people who voted, the only person who got the answer right was my proof reader. Lol. This new idea is so unlike me, and it wouldn't sound like a profitable idea to any regular person. But hey, it doesn't need to make sense to others. It doesn't need to sound a certain way - it just needs to have real, tangible potential and excite you.

Going forward, my intention is to keep you in the loop with how this project is going with periodical, very transparent updates.

The aim to show you it's possible, realistic and profitable. It's not a dream, an interpretation from lala-land or off-limits to anyone who doesn't have a degree in tech. Anyone with a good idea, work ethic and willingness to learn new things can do this.

Listen, this is my tenth year in the blogging industry (absolutely INSANE saying that out loud). This new project involves things I've never done before and I'm having to learn about from scratch. I'm ten years in and still learning new things, getting out of my comfort zone. And I am so ready to see how this all plays out because I love trying new things in the wonderful world of blogging. The worst that'll happen? I'll learn more about how to blog and how not to. And the best thing? Well, in the most cliché way possible, the sky is the limit.

If you have any questions or would like to share your thoughts, I'd love to hear them!

With love,

Fatima x

PS: You can read my 1 month update here.