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Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?

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Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?

#111

Post by mooreds »

> - Does the time spent writing feels worth it to you?

100%. I've been blogging since 2003. It helps clarify my thoughts. It helps me learn things. It helps me see how much I've learned and changed.

I wrote a bit more about blogging for myself here: https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2188

> - Did it help to get noticed/ find jobs or other opportunities?

Umm, a bit. I've gotten a bit of contract work from it. I've published a book from my blog (yet to earn out my advance). I've been in job interviews where people mentioned my blog. I was asked to be on a podcast because of something I'd written (but only because it trended on HN).

But no "Dan is making $Xk/month from his blog and only works 10 hours/week."

> - Do you learn something new from it?

Yes! I have found that I've never learned something so much as when I tried to explain it. And explaining something using words is so much harder than interactively; you have to be clearer and you have to be more rigorous.

Examples:

https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3244

https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2832

Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?

#112

Post by podviaznikov »

ihuman wrote: post #106
kk6mrp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have an RSS feed?

Yes. I can't find a link to it, but it's in the , so parsers and browser extensions can see it https://podviaznikov.com/feed.xml

cool that you found it!

Only added it yesterday.

Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?

#113

Post by algoeci »

nicolas_t wrote: post #31

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…

Highly recommend Thinking About Things (https://www.thinking-about-things.com), which sends me articles from blogs I've never heard of a few times a week. They also have a pull-version at https://readsomethinginteresting.com.

Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?

#114

Post by djbebs »

Yes, absolutely!

I write an investment blog and find that it's great to force me to think through my investments to see if they are actually a good idea or not.

I also often refer back to it later on when judging my performance and to see if I did the right thing or not.

In terms of opportunities, it's certainly opened the door for other side gigs that do help give some substantial side income. Though taxes there are a pain!

Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?

#116

Post by nonch0n »

podviaznikov wrote: post #97
cphaynes wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long have you used https://montaigne.io/ ? Never heard about it before; very interested. Love the simplicity of your site, by the way.

https://montaigne.io/ is my small project! It's a third iteration of it. For a few years I had following setup: 1. keep files in dropbox 2. sync them and publish automatically using montaigne.io Now I switched and instead of Dropbox I use Apple Notes. Because it's easier to write, and mobile UI is better and it supports tables and images out of the box.

Cool, I just signed up. Is there no way to change your site's URL once you've picked it in settings? Can you use a custom domain or will it always be x.montaigne.io? The help page is empty - this would be a good place to put FAQs. FYI I'd be willing to pay for something like this as it tears down all excuses for me not to have a blog, and I'm sure many Apple users would share that sentiment.

Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?

#117

Post by PragmaticPulp »

From the hiring side, I always spend time reading people's blogs, Github, or social media if they make an effort to include it on their resume.

9 out of 10 times, blogs are extremely stale content from 5+ years back. A lot of people start blogging at the beginning of their careers and then just stop. This creates a weird frozen-in-time effect where what's shown on their blog doesn't match their current skillset at all.

I've read enough personal blogs that I know to look for timestamps and put it in context. If I see a "Ruby on Rails TODO app MVP" blog post or Github repo dated 8 years ago, I'm not going to use that for consideration in hiring them.

However, not every resume reader is going to be that considerate. If your blog isn't up to date, you may want to omit it from applications to avoid giving someone the wrong impression that you're still a beginner.

Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?

#118

Post by iamflimflam1 »

During pandemic I started up a YouTube channel (I'm sure I'm not alone...) just to document my side projects (https://www.youtube.com/c/atomic14) - for some reason I've found it much easier to publish videos than write blog posts.

The YouTube channel has done fairly well with around 24,000 subs and has led to a lot of interesting conversations and consulting work.

My original intention was to do blog posts in conjunction with the videos, but it's proved very hard.

I do occasionally make an effort and get something out the door, but soon slip behind: https://www.atomic14.com

Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?

#119

Post by gioagugini »

xena wrote: post #107

I've found it worth doing. My blog (xeiaso.net, formerly christine.website) is the main way that I get employed at this point. It also helps that people link it here a lot. After 100 articles or so writing got a lot easier and now people rely on my blog for a lot of things. I think it's worth it, but I've also been exclusively self-hosting it. I currently have the code (and writing) open source on GitHub ( https://gi…

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?

#120

Post by modeless »

Yes. It does take a lot of time! But it's worth the time to do a good job, because the returns are nonlinear with the quality IMO.

You want something good enough to make it on social news sites, not just for the traffic spike but because it will make search engines notice you. I have some posts that are just "here's how I solved this error message" or similar and I'm not posting those on HN but I want people searching that message to find my blog so I can help them. When I get a post on HN then over time those other posts get more search traffic.

I got my most interesting and fun job through my blog, when the CTO of a startup read a post on HN and reached out to hire me. And at that time my blog only had two posts, so it wasn't like I was a prolific regular blogger. I just had one thing interesting enough to make it on HN.

I just moved to self hosting my blog at https://james.darpinian.com and trying to post a little more often. Honestly self hosting is probably not worth the trouble. A hosted platform with a custom domain is probably the sweet spot.

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