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Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

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Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#211

Post by AndrewStephens »

My website is pure vanity but I sometimes write brief reviews of books on my blog. Once I was contacted by a publisher offering to send me a hardback copy of a new book from an author I had previously written nice things about. I accepted and wrote a review of the new book[0] - sadly I didn't enjoy it as much as the first.

Before you accuse me of selling out for a free book, I would like everyone to know that I totally sold out for a free book and I would do so again.

[0] https://sheep.horse/2018/5/book_-_making_the_monster_by_kath...

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#212

Post by racl101 »

Vibgyor5 wrote: post #80
benwerd wrote: post #63

I've been blogging since 1998 and can trace every major step forward in my career to my blog. In 2003 I started writing about social networking and education - the replies to that blog post helped me kickstart my first startup. In 2009 my blog posts about technology ethics led to me giving a talk at Harvard, which led to my becoming the first employee at a media tech startup. That in turn led to me learning more abou…

> I recommend it. Start a blog - on your own domain, on webspace that you control. Following up on this - any specific reason behind this? I am considering starting a newsletter soon to first gather audience and Substack looks like right solution for this without requiring much technical setup, esp. as a non-tech. Idea is to first start blogging, get into that mindspace, build an audience and then you can move it to…

I can't even get past the part where I gotta pick a domain name. lol

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#213

Post by burkaman »

Vibgyor5 wrote: post #80
benwerd wrote: post #63

I've been blogging since 1998 and can trace every major step forward in my career to my blog. In 2003 I started writing about social networking and education - the replies to that blog post helped me kickstart my first startup. In 2009 my blog posts about technology ethics led to me giving a talk at Harvard, which led to my becoming the first employee at a media tech startup. That in turn led to me learning more abou…

> I recommend it. Start a blog - on your own domain, on webspace that you control. Following up on this - any specific reason behind this? I am considering starting a newsletter soon to first gather audience and Substack looks like right solution for this without requiring much technical setup, esp. as a non-tech. Idea is to first start blogging, get into that mindspace, build an audience and then you can move it to…

I think the best strategy is to do both. Publish on your own site so you have control and aren't fully dependent on someone else's service, and then also post to Substack and wherever else your audience is.

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#214

Post by racl101 »

nigamanth wrote: post #89
Vibgyor5 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recommend it. Start a blog - on your own domain, on webspace that you control. Following up on this - any specific reason behind this? I am considering starting a newsletter soon to first gather audience and Substack looks like right solution for this without requiring much technical setup, esp. as a non-tech. Idea is to first start blogging, get into that mindspace, build an audience and then you can move it to…

Whoever you use, Medium, Substack, Wordpress, your blog is in their hands. If one day you forget to do XYZ task, they can take it all away. You need to control your audience to reduce chances of "unforeseen circumstances"

Can you elaborate on:

> If one day you forget to do XYZ task, they can take it all away.

What kinds of tasks? Who's they?

I can see Medium and Substack changing their rules and stuff.

But WordPress?

Isn't it controlled entirely by you?

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#217

Post by pncnmnp »

tricky wrote: post #178
pncnmnp wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it! It's not cringy - I thoroughly enjoyed it! Out of curiosity, were you able to verify the firefighter story? Edit: I've removed the link.

Glad you enjoyed it! And, no, i never did verify the firefighter story.

So, I looked into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's archive (1874 to present) in the hope of solving this mystery, but could not find anything. However, I did find a rather fascinating article titled "A Morning in the Cave" that was published on 28 July 1996. If anyone is affiliated with an academic institution, they can read it on ProQuest.

There is a free OCR version available here:

Page 7: https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/142619929/?terms=%22cher...

Unfortunately, I could not find the page 8 clipping on newspapers.com.

Edit: I found the page 8 clipping - https://www.newspapers.com/clip/25694845/the-world-beneath-1...

It looks like this was part of a larger Sunday piece titled "The World Beneath". You can find all six clippings on r22tycoon's newspapers.com account at https://www.newspapers.com/clippings/?user=4850847%3Ar22tyco...

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#218

Post by bcherry »

I'm fairly certain that writing about JavaScript on my personal blog (https://adequatelygood.com) led directly to landing a lucrative job at Twitter in 2010 which was foundational to my career. I had just a few months of experience in JavaScript (or programming in any serious professional capacity) but writing about it made me taken seriously and was a major accelerant to my career.

Not sure of whether that experience is transferable in the current landscape. It also didn't hurt that I was already living in SF.

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