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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?

#81

Post by ge96 »

I write "technical" blogs, lately I don't do tutorials/guides. Those take a while to write since they need nice pictures/have to be reproducible... also when people hit you up like "this library has been deprecated" and the post is 3 years old.

I do it for the points/views ego boost but also part of me wishes it lives on when I'm gone (ha). I write about whatever I'm building (project).

I have not gotten anything out of the writing though, other than pushing out content/getting followers. I used to think I'd run a high-traffic blog and live off that but it's hard since I think most people use centralized stuff like Reddit.

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

#82

Post by mattlondon »

I found that a "blog" added too much of a notion that there needed to be regular updates added every day/week/month/whatever. It felt like I /had/ to add something frequently and regularly otherwise I was failing. This was too much pressure and so things were right abandoned.

Instead of a blog, consider just a well put together site about things that interest you. There is no pressure to keep adding and updating, just a site where you can add a new page as often or infrequently as you like without any guilt. For added bonus points host it on GitHub pages so you can use their web based editor to make updates with near-zero friction.

I deliberately keep all of my online activity anonymous and firewalled for obvious reasons (so it is not a personal marketing outlet) but the learning opportunity is great. If I need to go learn something then for me that is often a good thing to write a page about.

Good luck.

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

#83

Post by teodorlu »

Yes. But not until I made my own thing from scratch / just using Pandoc. I have two previous sites that have seen zero activity in four years. They collapsed under the hassle of the build system.

Now I've aimed for:

- minimal friction to post or edit.

- useful for my thinking process.

I touch on what I like about my process here: https://play.teod.eu/documentation/

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

#84

Post by marssaxman »

hkon wrote: post #37
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…

YouTube took over that niche. What used to be a blog post is now a 10 minute video.

A ten minute video containing two minutes of useful information I could read in thirty seconds...

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

#85

Post by thih9 »

hkon wrote: post #37
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…

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?

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

#86

Post by asicsp »

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

Writing is an additional form of learning for me. Just the thought of sharing with someone makes me to do my research better, verify my assumptions, etc. I look up my posts first over docs/online-search if I've written about a topic before (and often, I'd have added related links which would be easier to follow compared to fresh research).

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

I sell programming ebooks, so having a blog helps in marketing.

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

#87

Post by cphaynes »

podviaznikov wrote: post #78

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…

How long have you used https://montaigne.io/? Never heard about it before; very interested.

Love the simplicity of your site, by the way.

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

#88

Post by pclmulqdq »

It was worth it for me as an entry point to understanding a bit more about web development (as a systems engineer).

I used to try to do two posts a month, hoping for extra "exposure" that way, but now I am doing one. Right now, it feels like a bit of a chore since projects I am working on do not naturally align with blog posts, but that should change soon.

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

#89

Post by mikedelago »

I think having a blog is fun. I don't really consider myself to have a brand, though - I could not care less if people read my website.

I think the most I get out of it is that it's a project where you can just make a website/infrastructure stack the way you want it, without anything really holding you back.

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

#90

Post by ge96 »

oxff wrote: post #24

> Personal Not in this day and age when you might lose a job if they find out you support Trump or aren't on-board with progressive egregores. Too much risk.

I was thinking about this from the perspective of saying "I wish to not have a job, be free, FIRE" and your employer sees that and they say "alright peace".
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