My website acts as a guide for my drawing progress (although I am still pretty bad, but will get better). I make a lot more YouTube videos. I do plan to publish articles, but I think videos do me a lot better. I think a blog is a requirement to have a map of my story. I try to post my YT videos on my website. Please take this advice, less is more. I like to use html pages and avoid managing a php website or anything more complex. I know it sounds weird, but I feel like the core of the web is a lot easier to maintain in the long term. Sorry to say, but I have not made a dollar with my blog. But I have heard a lot of thanks from people who want to draw. It keeps me going. My blog is https://larsbarnabee.com
Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
51–60 of 459 posts
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#52Honestly I kind of just enjoy writing. My blog has gotten tons of views and still gets a fair amount of traffic, made on HN's front page a bunch, and have some post translated to a few languages.
I haven't actively tried to monetize it (though I'd like to shift to income based on my own work rather than be tied to a company). I tried putting ads once in a while and it was ~decent but negligible, and kind of ruined the vibe. I have done a few one-off consulting things out of it and got some nice side-cash, but nothing meaningful.
What I do get is feeling engaged with the wider tech community. Seeing common questions and comments. A feeling that what I'm saying might resonate with some people. Interesting discussions on Twitter and HN. A few podcast invites, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#53I've been blogging for about 16 years. Writing is an underrated way to cement what you learn any given day or year, and over time has made it possible to reach into any part of the industry and get an actual response. Writing is particularly powerful in combination with actually doing things that (are perceived to) matter; the credibility from doing both is much higher than doing either. Concretely answering the ques…
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Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are you not blown up with spam comments?
Even when I had 25,000 page views daily, I'd only get a couple spam comments/day, easily deleted, no big deal. Now I get about one every 1-2 months.
Thanks for sharing this. Updated my beliefs on spam volume for small sites. And I don’t see why your site would be different from others, so this new belief is very reusable!
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#55I’ve just relaunched https://shahinrostami.com after spending a little too long writing the static site generator that now generates it. That, and https://datacrayon.com, have been the catalyst for several opportunities that have come my way.
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even when I had 25,000 page views daily, I'd only get a couple spam comments/day, easily deleted, no big deal. Now I get about one every 1-2 months.
Thanks for sharing this. Updated my beliefs on spam volume for small sites. And I don’t see why your site would be different from others, so this new belief is very reusable!
Try it for yourself and see your handle on my home page.
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#57Most often realized benefit of maintaining writeups on projects is using them as my own reference when I forget how I did something :P
Second most often realized benefit is forcing projects to actually get completed. Unless something is clearly a multipart adventure, I try to force myself to actually finish the thing before writing it up. I enjoy writing things up and documenting them, so it's a motivator. I've also decided to put things on my site first, rather than bite-size entertainment-for-others posts on various sites.
As others have said, it definitely has helped with interviews, though I haven't had to do one in a while.
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#58I've been running a blog at https://xeiaso.net for almost a decade now. It has been the single best decision I have ever made in my career. It allows me to skip technical screening interviews. It has made interviewing at companies _easy_ because I have _already proven_ that I understand what I'm talking about. Learning how to write well also makes it so much easier to explain things succinctly, especially when workin…
I always enjoy your posts! Thank you
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for sharing this. Updated my beliefs on spam volume for small sites. And I don’t see why your site would be different from others, so this new belief is very reusable!
Try it for yourself and see your handle on my home page.
I’ll give it a go! (And just in case some sarcasm or something came across, my last comment was sincere.)
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#60I've been running a blog at https://xeiaso.net for almost a decade now. It has been the single best decision I have ever made in my career. It allows me to skip technical screening interviews. It has made interviewing at companies _easy_ because I have _already proven_ that I understand what I'm talking about. Learning how to write well also makes it so much easier to explain things succinctly, especially when workin…
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