Home Improvement - My Other Writing Project

By Mark J. Donovan

Before I started writing techno-thriller novels I wrote for years about the home improvement space. Actually, I am still doing so. I started this website in 2005. HomeAdditionPlus has over 2,100 articles that I have written on all aspects of remodeling homes, building homes and home additions, and doing various other small and large home improvement projects. In the process I have filmed over 240 home improvement videos as well that can be found on my home improvement youtube channel.

So how did I get started in writing home improvement articles?

My younger son introduced me to blogger.com back in January of 2005. After writing a few articles on a couple of the major home remodeling projects I had done, and posting them on my blogger.com blogsite, I decided to build a full blown website. Thus HomeAdditionPlus.com was founded in February of 2005. For years I was prolific in my writing for the website, sometimes writing up to five articles a day, and none of them were very short. On average my articles were, and are, around 500 to 700 words, with some as much as 1,200 words. For examples, see my article on estimating the costs of building a room addition or this one on building your dream custom home.

Struck by Lightning, Twice

HomeAdditionPlus.com did extremely well in terms of traffic and revenue for years. The site was getting over 350K unique visitors a month and earning 6 figures income at its peak. Then came the Google Penguin and Panda search engine optimization nightmares in 2011 that negatively impacted tens of thousands of people like me. Those two SEO algorithm updates killed much of the traffic to HomeAdditionPlus.com and tens of thousands, if not millions of other websites.

HomeAdditionPlus.com has still not recovered from the impact of those SEO algorithms. I used to care, but no longer. I decided a long time ago that I would continue to write about what I am passionate about and give up trying to keep up with the SEO machinations of Google and other high tech internet purveyors.

So I continue to write about the home improvement and remodeling space, as well as writing novels, but just don't do the former as much. If, however, you are in need of home improvement advice or ideas you may want to check out this great home improvement website. Most likely you'll find answers to your home improvement related questions, as I've done it all after owning and building homes and home additions for 35+ years.