101–110 of 314 posts
I've been writing online for almost 10 years now https://podviaznikov.com/writings The best part for me is receiving some random emails from time to time with people saying they liked my post or poem or something else. I don't have expectations for those letters though. Intentionally I don't have google analytics on my site. When I did have it, it influenced how and what I was writing. Now I just write for myself. An…
It's definitely worth it for me as my blog doubles as a repository or personal notes, projects, and ideas I reference often. And sometimes I get noticed, so far without further opportunities. What made me blog way more, from once per month to nearly daily, was to switch to a lightweight, low-friction hosted blogging platform. Now the tool fades away and blogging feels fun.
> a lightweight, low-friction hosted blogging platform Which platform have you swictched to?
- It really clarifies my thinking.
- If I'm going to work with someone (someone I hire or who wants to hire me), I can share my blog posts as a way of showing how I think (outside the interview context).
- With my team, I can share posts that reflect an opinion and they are way more coherent than me doing it in audio.
- It's also really rewarding to occasionally get a note from someone about how they learned something from something I wrote (or just to see it organically mentioned on Twitter and such).
Honestly one main roadblock for me (as someone with no social media following) is that when I try to share to HackerNews, I've gotten flagged as promotional. But really when I share I'm kind of in the mode of "I think this would be interesting for the HN crowd, let me share it and if they agree they will up vote it". And when I'm writing, it's mostly for the HN type of audience (I used to write on Medium but found that I ended up being pulled to write more click-baity, mass-consumption pieces that were less rewarding to me).
It’s mostly because when I am motivated to write a post it’s about something that’s a really big deal in my life or something that took a long time.
Like I wrote a post about being a software engineer at the CDC when COVID hit and more recently about becoming a digital nomad.
My blog is not for job opportunities/professional purpose. My resume and LinkedIn gets me through any of those doors. It’s my representation of myself online I guess. The same way someone might curate their instagram feed, if someone wanted to do a deeper dive into who I am they could use my website.
But I do have opinions about technology and have considered writing polemic style articles. I’m just not sure anybody would read them or care.
I've been writing online for almost 10 years now https://podviaznikov.com/writings The best part for me is receiving some random emails from time to time with people saying they liked my post or poem or something else. I don't have expectations for those letters though. Intentionally I don't have google analytics on my site. When I did have it, it influenced how and what I was writing. Now I just write for myself. An…
Does it have an RSS feed?
EDIT: also because independent personal blogs are a rarity now, having a decent one means that you can really stand out from the crowd.
It is 100% for me, not for trying to get a job or anything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
YouTube took over that niche. What used to be a blog post is now a 10 minute video.
This is surprising to me, I’d say YouTube videos are harder to produce (and arguably consume) than blog posts. Does anyone know why are we seeing this trend? Is it because of monetization / easier to reach audience / something else?
As a side note, I miss reading blogs from people. I remember 12-14 years ago when google was still useful to find information, I would often stumble onto blogs that had a lot of relevant info. For example when looking for reviews about a private school, I'd see a blog with someone whose kids go to that school, when looking for reviews of a restaurant, I'd see someone with reviews on their blog, etc... Now it seems th…
YouTube took over that niche. What used to be a blog post is now a 10 minute video.