Here are the tools and services that I use to run this blog.
Hosting
Bonkers About Tech is hosted on a Virtual Private Server over at Linode. It runs on a Dockerized version of WordPress and a custom compiled version of Nginx (so that I could run Nginx Pagespeed).
I highly recommend Linode if you’re technical, however if you’re not so technical and just want to get going immediately with a new blog, then I recommend Bluehost.
You can checkout Linode here and read my full review here.
WordPress Theme
Bonkers About Tech was once a custom built website using Java based technologies such as Spring Boot, Dropwizard and a MySql database. However, I have now moved over to WordPress to make things easier for myself to add new features, pages and blog posts etc.
I looked at many different themes, free and premium and decided to invest in a premium theme that I knew was going to be updated regularly by a developer.
I know that the speed of a website is key to a good user experience, so I wanted one that was fast (my homepage has a score of 97% on Google PageSpeed Insights) and after looking at a bunch of reviews online, I finally settled on Astra Pro.
Monetization
When I first started Bonkers About Tech I used to monitize the site using Google Adsense and later, the Amazon Associates Affiliate Programme.
However, once I started to get a bit of traffic to my site, I was approached by one of the guys at Ezoic to put Ezoic ads on the site. I have since earned significantly more revenue as a result of using their platform which uses Artificial Intelligence to work out where and when to place ads on your site to maximize revenue.
I think you need 10K pageviews/month to get accepted, but once you’re at that point, you won’t regret signing up.
Checkout Ezoic here.
Want to start a blog?
If you fancy starting a blog for yourself, checkout my article on how to start a tech blog where I go into detail about how I started Bonkers About Tech plus lots of hints and tips about getting started.