Promoting a technical blog with €10 of ads: Google Ads vs Reddit Ads

The context

I run a technical blog: web-developpeur.com/blog/, with around twenty articles on Go, PHP/Symfony, Vue.js, DevOps and architecture (CQRS, Event Sourcing, goroutine leaks, PostgreSQL, and so on). The kind of articles I wish I'd found when I needed them.

SEO is starting to bring in organic traffic, but it's slow. Very slow. Google takes weeks to index, months to grant authority to a domain on technical queries. And in the meantime the articles just sit there, waiting.

The question I'm asking myself: can €10 of targeted ads speed things up? Not replace SEO, just test. Three concrete goals:

• More readers on the technical articles (Go, CQRS, Event Sourcing)
• Visibility with tech recruiters who Google candidates
• Understand whether online ads are worth it for an independent developer

The plan: €5 on Google Ads, €5 on Reddit Ads. Two days. Compare. This article is written before launching, it's the preparation guide. The results will be added afterwards.

Why a developer should care about ads

SEO is the long game: 3 to 6 months before you see anything if you start from zero. Paid ads are immediate feedback. We're not here for growth, we're running a validation experiment.

The real questions €10 of ads can answer in 48 hours:

• Do people click on "Event Sourcing in Go"? If the CTR is dismal, either the targeting is wrong or nobody's searching for it.
• Do they stay on the site? A 90% bounce rate on a technical article means the content disappoints, not the marketing budget.

There's also a recruiting angle I'd underestimated. A visible technical blog is a passive recruiting lever, recruiters Google candidates. If a well-ranked article on "CQRS Go" shows up in the results, that's a strong signal about technical level without me having to bring it up in an interview.

Unexpected bonus: understanding how online ads work is a useful skill when you work on SaaS products. Knowing the vocabulary (CTR, CPC, Quality Score, impression share) without having to ask a marketer.

Google Ads: step by step

Step 1: Create an account

Go to ads.google.com. Sign in with an existing Google account. Google will immediately try to get you to create a "Smart Campaign", the automatic mode where Google decides everything for you.

Don't do that. The "Switch to Expert Mode" button is small, at the bottom of the page, easy to miss. Click it before creating anything. In Smart mode, Google handles targeting, bidding and keywords itself. On a micro-budget, it will burn your €5 in a few hours on vaguely related queries, without giving you any usable data. It's a beginner trap, and it's designed to be one.

Step 2: Create a Search campaign

In Expert mode, create a new campaign. The settings:

• Campaign type: Search (not Display, not Video, we want people actively searching, not retargeting or banners)
• Goal: Website traffic
• Daily budget: €2.50/day (= €5 over 2 days)
• Bidding strategy: "Maximize clicks", the simplest for a test, Google optimizes to get the most clicks within budget
• Geographic area: France + Switzerland (French-speaking, a relevant recruiting zone)
• Language: French

Disable "Search Network partners". For a clean test, stay on Google only.

Step 3: Choose the keywords

Before choosing, use the Keyword Planner (Tools menu in the Google Ads interface, free once the account is created). It gives monthly volume and an estimated CPC range.

For a dev blog with technical articles, some relevant keywords:

• "event sourcing golang", niche, low competition, very low CPC, highly targeted
• "learn go developer", clear intent, qualified audience
• "cqrs golang example", technical long tail, exactly what I write
• "golang developer blog", direct branding
• "symfony vs laravel 2026", popular comparison, steady traffic
• "full stack developer blog", recruiter angle

The technical dev niche in French = very low CPC. Expect €0.05 to €0.30 per click. It's one of the rare niches where €5 can generate a decent number of clicks.

For match type: use "Phrase match". Not "Broad match" (Google serves for anything that vaguely resembles it), not "Exact" alone (too restrictive). Phrase match is the right compromise: your ad shows when your query appears in the search, in the right order.

Also think about negative keywords: add "jobs", "salary", "training", "free tutorial" as negatives if you want tech readers and not job seekers or people after free content who won't stick around. (Or the opposite, depending on your recruiting goal.)

Step 4: Write the ad

A Google Search ad: 3 headlines (30 characters max each) + 2 descriptions (90 characters max). Google combines and tests them automatically.

A concrete example for this blog:

• Headline 1: "Go & PHP Developer Blog"
• Headline 2: "CQRS and Event Sourcing in Go"
• Headline 3: "Concrete Technical Articles"
• Description 1: "A senior developer's field notes: Go, Symfony, Vue.js, DevOps. Real code, no fluff."
• Description 2: "CQRS, Event Sourcing, Docker, PostgreSQL. Technical articles with production examples."

Final URL: web-developpeur.com/blog/

Be specific about what you offer. "Real code, no fluff" says something concrete. "Super cool dev blog" says nothing.

Step 5: Launch and wait

Submit the campaign. Google reviews it, a few hours, sometimes up to 24h. Once approved, let it run for 2 days without touching the bids or keywords. Every change restarts a learning phase and skews the data. Note the metrics afterwards, not during.

Metrics to track in the interface: impressions, clicks, CTR, average CPC, total cost.

Reddit Ads: step by step

Step 1: Create an account

Go to ads.reddit.com. Use an existing Reddit account or create one. The interface is simpler than Google, fewer options, less marketing jargon.

Step 2: Create a campaign

Settings:

• Goal: Traffic
• Budget: €2.50/day (= €5 over 2 days)
• Community targeting: r/golang, r/PHP, r/webdev, r/programming, r/france (for the French-speaking audience)
• Interest targeting: "Programming", "Web Development"
• Location: France + Switzerland

Reddit works differently from Google: you target communities, not keywords. Your ads show in the feed of the chosen subreddits, between organic posts. The minimum CPC hovers around $0.10.

Step 3: The sponsored post

Reddit is a platform where users openly hate advertising. If your ad looks like an ad, it will generate visible negative comments, and Reddit shows them to everyone who sees the ad. Redditors spot the corporate tone from a mile away.

Recommended format: Link post. For the title, two examples:

• Good: "I wrote a series of articles on CQRS and Event Sourcing in Go, field notes with real code"
• Good: "Go/PHP/Symfony dev blog, technical articles with examples from real projects"
• Bad: "🔥 THE DEV BLOG YOU NEED 🔥 CLICK HERE"
• Bad: "Discover our revolutionary technical content platform"

The honest, direct tone, "I wrote this, here's what it is", works infinitely better on Reddit than a marketing headline. The people who click on an authentic post are also the ones who'll stay on the article.

Step 4: Launch and measure

Reddit approves ads faster than Google, often under an hour. Let it run for 2 days. On top of the classic metrics (impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC), Reddit shows the upvotes and comments the sponsored post received, an engagement indicator you don't get on Google.

How to measure ROI

Before launching anything: you need an analytics setup on the site. Without it, you'll see clicks in the dashboards but you won't know what happens after the visitor lands. Google Analytics (free), Plausible (paid but GDPR-clean), or a homemade tracker, the key is to measure behavior once on the site.

The metrics that matter, explained simply:

• Impressions: how many people SAW the ad (it appeared in their results or feed)
• Clicks: how many clicked
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): clicks ÷ impressions × 100. Above 1% = decent. Above 3% = very good. Below 0.5% = a targeting or ad problem.
• CPC (Cost Per Click): total cost ÷ number of clicks. For a technical dev blog: €0.05–€0.30 on Google, €0.15–€0.50 on Reddit.
• Bounce rate: the percentage of visitors who leave immediately. On a long technical article, above 80% is a mismatch between the ad and the content.
• Average time on site: are people reading or just scrolling before closing the tab?

Table to fill in after the 2 days:

A realistic estimate with €10

So there are no surprises, here are some ballpark figures for the technical dev niche in French:

• Google Ads (€5): niche dev keywords = low CPC. Expect 20 to 80 clicks depending on the keywords. "Event sourcing golang" in France is low competition, the CPC can be very low.
• Reddit Ads (€5): an engaged dev audience but a higher CPC. Expect 10 to 30 clicks, but readers who stay longer, r/golang or r/webdev are people who chose to follow these topics.

Estimated total: 30 to 100 targeted visits for €10. That's little in absolute volume. But it's devs and qualified recruiters, not random traffic. A tech recruiter who lands on a CQRS-in-Go article and spends 4 minutes reading is worth more than 500 banner impressions.

Pitfalls to avoid

1. Google's Smart mode. Mentioned above but it's worth repeating: Google pushes this mode because it leaves them full control. On a small test budget, it picks broad keywords, vague audiences, and burns the money without usable data. Always Expert mode.

2. Broad match keywords. With "Broad match", if you enter "golang", Google may serve your ad for "eastern languages" or "learn to code". Phrase match minimum.

3. The corporate tone on Reddit. A title that looks like marketing copy generates visible negative comments on the sponsored post. Be authentic or don't post.

4. Launching without tracking. If you don't have analytics on your site before starting, you spend €10 to see click numbers in the dashboards without knowing what happens next. It's pointless. Set up a tracker first, it takes 30 minutes.

5. Editing the campaign every hour. Every change during the 48h restarts a learning phase. Let it run, note the data, analyze afterwards. Not during.

6. Forgetting negative keywords. Add "jobs", "salary", "training" as negatives if you want tech readers, not job seekers. Or the opposite if your goal is recruiting visibility, in which case those keywords are interesting intent signals.

Verdict: is it worth €10?

To learn how online ads work: yes, 100%. It's the only concrete way to understand the vocabulary, the interfaces and the mechanics without having to sit through hours of marketing content.

For immediate traffic on specific articles: yes, it works mechanically.

For passive recruiting: indirectly. An article that pulls steady traffic ends up ranking well organically, and a recruiter who Googles your name finds the CQRS-in-Go article before the LinkedIn.

Post-test decision grid:

• CTR > 2% and time on site > 2 min: there's demand and the content convinces. Consider a recurring budget (€20–50/month) alongside SEO.
• CTR > 1% but high bounce: the targeting is good but the content doesn't match the expectation the ad set. Rework either the ad or the articles.
• CTR < 0.5%: the targeting is wrong or the keywords are off the mark. Adjust before spending more.

Going further (for free)

Paid ads aren't SEO's plan B. They're a different tool: fast feedback for a fixed cost. SEO is a long-term investment that becomes free once it works. The two are complementary.

If you want to keep growing visibility without spending:

• Long-tail SEO: keep writing on precise queries, "event sourcing golang implementation", "detect goroutine leak", "symfony 7 new features". It's the number one long-term lever.
• Organic Reddit: share your articles in r/golang, r/PHP, r/webdev when it's relevant. The unwritten rule: 90% authentic participation, 10% personal promotion.
• Dev.to / Hashnode: cross-post the articles. Backlinks + an audience that's already there, without building from scratch.
• Tech Twitter/X: share with #golang #webdev #symfony. The tech audience is still active there.
• LinkedIn: post the articles, recruiters are there. Might as well make their job easier.