More information about the author Johann Kodnar, the blog and what I write about here
My background
After graduating in International Business Administration, I now work full-time as an employee in the field of controlling and project management. I try to incorporate this background into my articles by making them as analytical and comprehensible as possible and by making sure that the information provided actually corresponds to the practical situation. In addition, my job requires me to critically question things that are supposedly viewed as facts.
During my school and university years, I worked as an editor for various magazines and online media. Together with my personal passion for do-it-yourself solutions, this led to the idea of sharing my own experiences and solutions with others. This was encouraged by the fact that the information available on the web on the subject of garden irrigation was largely very poor and incomplete and hardly any manufacturer-independent comparisons were made between products, making it difficult to find the best possible solution. With the publicly available information, it was actually hardly possible to plan garden irrigation sensibly.
This is how the blog came about
This contradicted my own experience that garden irrigation can be easily implemented independently by laypeople if the essential information is available. So I decided to pass on my own knowledge in this blog. Initially in my native language, German, later an English-language version of the blog was added. The first pages were Planning, Purchasing, Installing and Controlling, in which I described the individual steps for implementing automatic irrigation in project form. Later the blog was expanded to include the related topics of fountains, in which I described the implementation of my own garden fountain, as well as pumps and cisterns, and numerous blog posts on special topics. Among other things, I also compared the sprinklers available on the market and evaluated them based on specified criteria.
The blog found numerous readers right from the start, which encouraged me in my work. Unlike many colleagues in the blogging scene, I am not one of those prolific or fast writers. I do not write 30 posts a month, but I usually need a few weeks and in some cases a few months to write a new post. During this time, I carry out extensive research and try things out myself. The article is only published when I have answered all of my questions sufficiently and I think that the article is helpful. This is sometimes hard work, but over time I have nevertheless written an impressive number of over 150 articles.
On the one hand, these deal with the basics of garden irrigation, and on the other hand, in some articles I also delve into very specific subject areas that are only of interest to a select group of readers. The aim is to provide interesting information for both beginners and advanced users with very specific questions.
This is how it developed
The blog now has up to 100,000 visitors a month in the spring and summer months and also generates money due to the high number of visitors. I am of course happy about that, but it was important for me to find an intelligent balance between earning money and providing benefits. The readers of the blog expect useful and unbiased information and I want to meet this expectation. I have subsequently set myself editorial guidelines which, for example, exclude third parties from providing me with test devices free of charge. I buy all test devices myself and then allow myself to write my opinion uninfluenced and without regard to third parties.
There are also no reports on my blog that have been written for payment. If I write something stupid somewhere, then it is my own nonsense, which, if pointed out to me, will be gladly corrected. But I do not deliberately misrepresent anything because I want to gloss over something or not step on a sponsor’s toes. I also write about what I find interesting and not about things that advertising partners tell me to write. The blog only contains classic banner advertising or collaborations where readers benefit from discounts from partners. Influence on editorial work is not permitted.
Outlook for the future
There are still a few specialist topics on my to-do list that I would like to take a closer look at. I would also like to expand the product testing section of the blog. I have found that the information and reviews found on the web are often relatively worthless as a basis for a purchase decision because the individual products are rarely compared with one another. For example, you find out that someone is happy with a product, but you don’t know whether the person knew about other products or would have been much happier with other products or perhaps simply had very low expectations. But you want to choose the best product for your personal requirements and so this critical comparison of the products in question is, in my view, the essential point. Products that seem similar at first glance often have very significant differences in practice that are difficult to understand when you first start looking at the topic. One example is the area of irrigation computers.
Feedback and suggestions for topics and improvements to the blog are very welcome and, to the surprise of many readers, I answer 99% of the emails sent to me.
I wish you every success with your own irrigation project and I would be happy if the content provided in the blog is of use to you!