Personal travel and web blog @ site2max.ru (pet project)
Full CV index — Tony Miasoedov
- Candidate: Tony Miasoedov, Senior Software Engineer
- Company: site2max.ru (pet project)
- Period: 2016
- Role: Founder, solo developer
- Team: Solo project
- Main result: Built and grew site2max.ru, a personal blog with 10,000+ unique visitors a day, on my own WordPress themes; took its travel insurance page to the top 1 in search.
Context
It started as a personal blog after I moved to Thailand. I used it to practice running a project and to develop my own themes and the blocks I needed for WordPress.
I stopped working on it when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and later the war in Ukraine, since spending winters in Thailand was no longer possible.
Unfortunately, the blog was hacked in 2026. I restored its HTML version from the web archive but haven't worked on it since, so it now gets about 1,000 visitors a day and has a lot of errors.
What I did well
I'm personally proud of 2 results.
A Thailand travel insurance page I took to the top 1 in search
This result shows not only promotion skills but also the ability to understand the audience and deliver business results. Travel insurance is one of the few ways to earn from tourist traffic, and competition between blogs and insurance companies is very high.
Here is what I did: I split the audience into cohorts by problem — mothers with children, motorbike riders, tourists afraid of exotic diseases, and so on. For each cohort I analyzed real insurance contracts and reviews of them. The result was a large table showing which insurer solves which problem. The page collected 1,000+ real comments. Insurance companies approached me themselves, offering personal discounts and dedicated managers for quick contact.
Page: Travel insurance in Thailand
A hosting comparison page built on a unique method
I collected a list of all hosting providers, then found statistics on how many people signed up and how many stopped using each one within the first year. Based on this data, I built a hosting ranking that accounts not only for popularity but also for user retention.
For each hosting provider I added uptime statistics, ping and download speed.
The page earned high traffic and positive feedback from users, because it gave unique and useful information for choosing a hosting provider.
Page: Choosing the best hosting for Russia, 2016
Stack & skills
- WordPress: Built my own WordPress themes and the custom blocks the blog needed.
- PHP: Wrote the PHP code of the blog's themes and blocks.
- MySQL: Ran the blog on a MySQL-backed WordPress.
- Reusable templates: Developed my own themes for the blog.
- SEO: Took the Thailand travel insurance page to the top 1 in search engines against blogs and insurance companies.
- Marketing analytics: Split the audience into cohorts by problem and matched each to insurers by analyzing real contracts and reviews.
- Content marketing: Built pages with unique data — an insurance comparison table and a hosting ranking based on first-year retention, uptime, ping and download speed.
- Communication: Insurance companies approached me with personal discounts and dedicated managers for my readers.
- Ownership: Ran the blog end to end — development, content, promotion.