How a Kolkata Blogger Built a $30K/Year How-To Guide Business

Who built it, and what they built

Abhishek Ghosh founded The Customize Windows, a blog based in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, that publishes how-to guides and DIY projects covering software and electronics topics.

The site has been running for over a decade and brings in 30 thousand dollars per year, with a small team of four people supporting it.

Where the idea came from

Abhishek grew up tinkering with electronics in a small home lab and learned BBC BASIC as his first programming language. His family had a teak export business, and he moved to Kolkata in 2008 while pursuing a medical career.

Inspired by bloggers like Christopher Heng and Darren Rowse, he wanted to share what he knew about tweaking Microsoft Windows. In 2010, while studying for competitive exams, he launched a site called Customize Windows on Microsoft Office Live, spending two to three hours a day on it.

At the end of 2010 he met Ankur Mittal, an engineering student and blogger whose guidance helped shape the site into what it became.

How they built the first version

The first version ran on Office Live, which Abhishek found too rigid to customize. Ankur pointed him toward self-hosted WordPress, and he registered thecustomizewindows.com because readers already knew the Customize Windows name.