It is valuable activity if you like doing it. I think just forcing yourself to do it for the sake of it is a mistake.
Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?
11–20 of 314 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?
#12You can publish your Notion pages to the internet for free BTW :)
I think you should always own your own content. For example iff you review a movie on letterboxd or IMDB or a book on Goodreads or maybe do a longer review of a product on Amazon - duplicate the same content on your own blog. Or just a markdown file on your own drive.
That way you can copy the same content to as many platforms as you want, but you still own the original if the service goes down or decides your contribution isn't worthy.
Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?
#13I wrote one blog post that accidentally landed me in a newsletter.
I thought I'd want to try and do it on purpose, and that attempt landed two requests to interview.
My reason to write anything was always a need to express myself rather than seeking a goal.
Peaceful ranting.
I had a similar path:
- started with personal notes (hackmd.io)
- when something seemed publishable, started a dev.to blog
- eventually moved to a self-hosted platform (getzola.org)
- due to overwork stopped publishing, but still keep personal notes
Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?
#14I've blogged in fits and starts, but it always seemed to fall out of favour because I wasn't too happy with the platform (speed, aesthetics, etc.)
What seemed to work for me was realizing that I am not blogging for others, for meaningless internet points, etc. I blog for myself, and I blog publicly on the off chance it helps someone.
That's all. No pressure, no commitments.
Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?
#15Completely. Every single progression in my job over 24 years (I started blogging in 1998) has come through my blog. Some of those were huge. Self-hosted is the way to go. Start small; post on a regular schedule; comment on other peoples' blogs.
What sorts of blog posts led to those progressions? Or was there no common theme?
Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?
#16I forked the blog example in the Next.js repo (hosting is free on Cloudflare Pages, and Vercel) and just started regularly writing about React.
I spend maybe a couple of hours on each article. I learned to be a better writer, and its helped me professionally.
My favourite part is googling common problems I wrote about, and finding my own articles still there, like past me helping current me.
Site is https://maxrozen.com if you're curious.
Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?
#17I've been blogging since forever but the classic / style got stifling. When it looked like Twitter was going to hell in handbasket I implemented a "tumbleblog" that's a lot more free-form and where I don't have to have an entire concept before writing. My blog has never led to any professional advancement, it's purely self-expression.
This sounds extremely up my alley and I've often daydreamed about implementing something like this myself. Can you share more about your implementation?
Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?
#18Absolutely, yes.
My blog ( https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com ) is primarily a way for me to share teaching material around React, Redux, JS, and TS. Most of my blog posts have been written in response to questions other folks have asked that I've answered repeatedly. It gives me a way to write a longer answer _once_, and share it going forward.
A few top examples:
- "A (Mostly)" Complete Guide to React Rendering Behavior": https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2020/05/blogged-answers-a-...
- "Why Context Is Not A 'State Management' Tool (and Why it Doesn't Replace Redux": https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2021/01/context-redux-diff...
- "The History and Implementation of React-Redux": https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2018/11/react-redux-histor...
- The slides and videos for my various conference talks: https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/series/presentations
I've never had a specific goal of "trying to get noticed" per se, but I've certainly done a lot of "hey, here's this post I wrote that answers your question". And yes, in addition to brain-dumping my existing knowledge, I often end up doing additional research while writing posts.
As a result, I've had numerous folks tell me that my posts were helpful and that they learned something, which is really all I wanted out of this.
(side note: my blog is still using an ancient version of Hugo, 0.17, because that's what was out when I started. It's simple, it works, and I have no reason to change it :) )
Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?
#19well, when some companies started to place Google ads on my name I realized there might be some value in my personal brand.
did not get it via blogging but via conference speaking and a book. blog is just a channel.
Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?
#20For me the biggest thing that helped my "personal brand" wasn't so much the blog, but was taking some of the blog entries and submitting them as talks for programming conferences.
Being a speaker at a decent size programming conference, opens up a lot of networking opportunities.
The blog provided an outlet for me to make an idea into something more concrete, as well as allowed me get early feedback on the idea. I used this to refine the idea into something that would be of interest to a larger audience.