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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?

#231

Post by manuelmoreale »

jordanmorgan10 wrote: post #143

I've had https://www.swiftjectivec.com for several years. Benefits: - I don't do much front end, so I enjoy learning new stuff to maintain it like Tailwind, Jekyll, etc. - I learn new things all the time since I typically write technical posts. - I Google something, and stumble upon my *own* posts sometimes! - I look at it as a career benefit as well, something employers could look at. - It does help with other thing…

> However, we are quick to say that this should be the default for everyone, and I don't think that's the case.

Would you mind elaborating on why you think that's the case? I find this take very interesting.

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

#232

Post by justhw »

a4isms wrote: post #200

This is Raganwald, ( http://raganwald.com ). I'm glad you mentioned both a blog AND a brand. They can go together (as they have done for me), but I honestly get different things out of them. Blogging helped me work out my thoughts on many subjects, not all of which were useful for "building my brand." The brand, on the other hand, helped me build enough personal security to feel safe taking chances like quitting my j…

Good to see you still check out HN :) What happened to the old username?

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

#233

Post by xena »

anthropodie wrote: post #224
the_arun wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your blog looks awesome! a) People who copy blogs could copy anything public.. correct? That shouldn't stop you from blogging. OR b) By copying, did you mean they are forking your git repo & hosting it with a wrapper on top of your content? I'm assuming it is (b) you are worried about.

Forking a repo is lot easier than scraping a blog and then re-hosting it. I think it's most probably (b) that OP is talking about.

I am talking about option B yeah. It's less frequent after I stopped using Dockerfiles to build the blog, but it happens sometimes. Sending a "can you don't" message to the person and their hosting provider usually gets them to stop though.

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

#234

Post by t-3 »

pc86 wrote: post #210
sandyarmstrong wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trend to remove dates from blog posts is problematic for just this reason (as well as being reader-hostile).

I feel like words have lost all meaning when we're calling removing a date from a blog article "hostile." It's only so for non-evergreen content, anyway. There's plenty of technical content that is just as relevant today even though it was written 2, 5, 10 years ago. Edit for clarification: By no means am I saying that it's bad to have dates, or that we shouldn't have them. They make sense a lot of times, it's just k…

Why would dates be removed from articles? (and why is this only a thing for 'news' articles and advertisements? I've never seen a personal blog without dates)

The only reason I can think of is to misrepresent the content as being more up-to-date and relevant than it actually is. Useful content that doesn't go out of date would never be harmed by including one.

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

#235

Post by mathgladiator »

I used to until I just consolidated the advice into a single pagehttp://jeffrey.io/ -> http://jeffrey.io/consolidated-writings.html

I found it hard to maintain content around myself, but for my new company I find it easy to pump out content since there is a topic: https://www.adama-platform.com

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

#236

Post by a4isms »

justhw wrote: post #232
a4isms wrote: post #200

This is Raganwald, ( http://raganwald.com ). I'm glad you mentioned both a blog AND a brand. They can go together (as they have done for me), but I honestly get different things out of them. Blogging helped me work out my thoughts on many subjects, not all of which were useful for "building my brand." The brand, on the other hand, helped me build enough personal security to feel safe taking chances like quitting my j…

Good to see you still check out HN :) What happened to the old username?

I've retired it for a while, I kind of enjoy posting without anyone attaching greater—or lesser!—weight to my words because someone recognizes who is saying them.

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

#237

Post by abadger9 »

It was not! If you look in my history you'll see I talk about my experience starting a consulting company. I had a personal website and brand at the same time, and it was probably a huge waste of time. I never appreciated the engagement I got on comments on blog posts, wouldn't say it brought any new clients, and don't really have anything positive to say other than it was nice owning a domain with my full name.

As I've gotten older, i've come to terms with the fact that's there is really 2 solid ways of earning great money - leet code (yuck but it does the trick) or start a consulting business and build out referrals, most startups aren't worth the time

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

#238

Post by jordanmorgan10 »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #231
jordanmorgan10 wrote: post #143

I've had https://www.swiftjectivec.com for several years. Benefits: - I don't do much front end, so I enjoy learning new stuff to maintain it like Tailwind, Jekyll, etc. - I learn new things all the time since I typically write technical posts. - I Google something, and stumble upon my *own* posts sometimes! - I look at it as a career benefit as well, something employers could look at. - It does help with other thing…

> However, we are quick to say that this should be the default for everyone, and I don't think that's the case. Would you mind elaborating on why you think that's the case? I find this take very interesting.

I think some of the benefits that come from having your own space on the internet can also be achieved other ways. For example, maybe you've got a Github profile with some fun projects or forks. Maybe you just like hawking neat code snippets on Twitter or elsewhere.

So, I don't think writing is required - but I also think it can be very beneficial and we can't deny that.

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

#239

Post by davnicwil »

miscaccount wrote: post #157
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #117

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 al…

The number of interviewers who even read resume, let alone a blog is very minimal. Even if they read it , i doubt people would be asked the same questions as one who has no blog. So in my opinion the return of investment in terms of hiring is close to zero. However it can be a great tool to document your journey or learning and how much one has evolved.

The ones who you want it to matter to and to work with will read it though. Think of them mentioning it as a filter in your process.

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

#240

Post by qudat »

I created a hugo blog as well (https://erock.io). It's been a great outlet for me to express myself. It has been on the FP of HN before which was a ton of fun to see the metrics.

However, I totally agree that maintaining the blog has been a bit of a chore and since I wanted to write more I feel like it is actually hindering me.

I'm slowly transitioning to use https://prose.sh (disclaimer, I helped build it) exclusively which should make writing a blog post as easy as creating a markdown file locally and calling `scp post.md prose.sh:/`

As far as it opening doors for me, not really. I sit at around 10-20k unique users a month but who knows how many people are actually engaged in the content.

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