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

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

#1

Post by zulrah »

I'm curious if people here find blogging as a valuable activity from the following perspectives: - Does the time spent writing feels worth it to you? - Did it help to get noticed/ find jobs or other opportunities? - Do you learn something new from it?

Personally, I tried writing in some blogging platforms (medium, dev.to etc), then moved to self hosted solution with Hugo but honestly it was too much maintenance. Writing up my thoughts in presentable state took too much time/effort. Right now, I simply save my notes to my personal Notion for future reference.

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

#2

Post by pamoroso »

It's definitely worth it for me as my blog doubles as a repository or personal notes, projects, and ideas I reference often. And sometimes I get noticed, so far without further opportunities.

What made me blog way more, from once per month to nearly daily, was to switch to a lightweight, low-friction hosted blogging platform. Now the tool fades away and blogging feels fun.

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

#3

Post by giuliomagnifico »

Good question! Yes for me it was worth, I also switched from Medium to personal VPS (on DigitalOcean) + Jekyll (https://giuliomagnifico.blog), I spent lots of time to configure all the things but now it’s worth, I learned lots of things and I’m really the owner of my posts for few $/months (5$). I’m also using, for the analytics, Umami on a free Heroku instance and it’s very useful to ditch Google analytics, since now it’s also illegal in EU.

What I think is missing online, is a minimal blog service that is also fast to use and not expensive, something like a minimal Ghost or Squarespace for 5-6$/month. I’m using it for my portfolio (https://giuliomagnifico.it) and its a great service but it’s also way too expensive (20$/month) unfortunately!

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

#4

Post by sebastianconcpt »

Self hosted, hands down. The big tech lost all credibility in being a medium for your voice. They can't help it, they want control over it.

Said that, is worth for self-referece as the very least. You'll see the evolution of your subjects of interest, styles and voice.

For example, some post might be useful for referencing in a future interview.

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

#8

Post by dusted »

I don't have a brand, but having a personal website is worth it to me, on a personal level, it shows the stuff I've done through the years, some people might find it useful, but the primary thing for me, is to have it so that I can look back at what I've done, and serve as a practical way to show stuff to people who are interested.

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

#9

Post by gerikson »

I've been blogging since forever but the classic / style got stifling. When it looked like Twitter was going to hell in handbasket I implemented a "tumbleblog" that's a lot more free-form and where I don't have to have an entire concept before writing.

My blog has never led to any professional advancement, it's purely self-expression.

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