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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?

#291

Post by rcarmo »

I’m still writing mine (taoofmac.com), for nearly 20 years now. Tone and content changed (following my hobbies now, mostly), pace changed (from daily to once a week), but it’s still there.

I think the main issue these days is that people have either become more focused on short form content or on relentless promotion of fluff. Once blogs became a corporate thing, a lot of objectivity (and usefulness) was lost.

On the other hand, there are still plenty of people out there writing about niche technology topics with a lot of quality.

They’re just not on Medium or any of the usual content mills.

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

#292

Post by chidiw »

I've had my personal site for about two years now and I've found it quite valuable to maintain. (I started out with one or two articles on dev.to before moving to my own self-hosted site at https://chidiwilliams.com.)

While I haven't gotten any jobs or major opportunities from it, someone once emailed me saying one of my posts helped them prepare for (and ace) an interview at Google. Plus, I've randomly run into people who, after hearing my name, tell me they've read and liked some of my posts.

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

#293

Post by trumbitta2 »

It worked in 2016. While interviewing for a startup, the CTO asked the Lead Frontend Engineer if they had any questions for me. The Lead replied: "Are you serious? I literally learned Bootstrap from his blog!"

Never worked again since (Yes, I stopped writing about Bootstrap in 2014).

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

#294

Post by PrayagS »

alexpotato wrote: post #255

My personal story: I read patio11 over the years and was struck by his often mentioned "Write about what you know and it will surprise you the value it will add to people" (paraphrasing). In particular, in one of his posts about consulting he mentions: "Some of my consulting engagements were essentially me doing a dramatic reading of my blogs posts." I realized that for the past couple years I had been coaching my fr…

Can you please share a link to your blog?

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

#295

Post by Antoninus »

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…

read christine.website for a while! keep it up!

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

#296

Post by yoble »

PrayagS wrote: post #294
alexpotato wrote: post #255

My personal story: I read patio11 over the years and was struck by his often mentioned "Write about what you know and it will surprise you the value it will add to people" (paraphrasing). In particular, in one of his posts about consulting he mentions: "Some of my consulting engagements were essentially me doing a dramatic reading of my blogs posts." I realized that for the past couple years I had been coaching my fr…

Can you please share a link to your blog?

There is a blog linked in their HN bio (http://alexpotato.com/blog), but it's about paintball coaching. I'd be interested in checking out their other blog as well.

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

#297

Post by tzekid »

lbriner wrote: post #55

It does depend why you want to do it and what you are posting. If it is just opinions about stuff, probably not worth the effort unless you are the top of your field and your opinions are worth something (mine aren't!) If you want to get noticed, it might help but in general I think that only happens if you have a niche. I got invited to speak at two dev conferences and part of that was because of my blog. If you are…

Care to share a link to your blog?

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

#298

Post by charles_f »

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…

> because people keep copying it, slathering it in ads and rehosting it.

Never occurred to me that was a possibility, but wouldn't you know, my last two posts seem to have copies on other people's blog

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

#299

Post by diamondap »

ihateolives wrote: post #214
diamondap wrote: post #35

It's been worth it for me, though not yet in the way I had expected. I write novels when I'm not coding, and I maintain a self-hosted blog about reading and writing mysteries and thrillers. I had hoped to draw a loyal audience of readers who would buy my books, though I never actually implemented a coherent readership-building strategy. I just wrote about whatever I felt like. Turns out, a handful of like-minded read…

Are you willing to share your blog? I'm genuinely interested.

Thanks. My author site is https://adiamond.me
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