Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

Years ago I started a personal blog but like many others, I found myself struggling to write more than a couple of posts per year. The barrier of quality felt too large. So I decided to create a separate shortform blog where I would share small code snippets that solved problems for me.

It turned out to be quite popular and since I started the blog in 2013 it's gotten well over 1.5 million visitors and still attracts hundreds every day, exculsively from search traffic.

While I can't say that it changed my life in any way, it did bring me a lot of satisfaction that it helped many people. It also taught me about the concept of "long tail keywords" on Google!

You can find it here if you are interested: https://snippets.khromov.se/

I think the idea of sharing writing in general could be broken down into a few fundamental benefits where the reception of said benefits depends on the person and the situation.

1. Sharing ideas to get feedback from a community can be incredibly useful for iteration.

2. Rubber duck principle: Sharing your thoughts out loud helps you refine them and you arrive at a better understanding of the subject. Example Stack overflow questions and answers.

3. Catharsis and/or Story telling: People who want to just write to express what they feel or like or do can be just incredible.

4. Money. Yeah.

>> On a different note, what has been the value of "creative posts" and even "creative name for your blog" for you?

Why do we name anything? There are many reasons, but it's important to distinguish your site from others. Content is the primary way to distinguish a blog because the original consumption tool was an RSS reader. Things have changed a lot, so more people go directly to most blogs.

If you have web design chops then there is an opportunity to create a distinct experience. The value of this is felt most by people who can appreciate good design, so unless you've goofed up usability, most people probably won't notice the design much. Don't mess up the usability because people remember bouncing from those sites or complain in comments here.

There are tons of developer blogs out there so unless you are notable in some area (big or small) for some set of readers then your name may not be enough. "Joel on Software" as a blog name stands out more than "Joel Spolsky's Blog". It is possibly easier to communicate verbally, signifies the content, feels informal, etc.

Does it matter if the content is only useful to you? It doesn't. The act of blogging improves your writing, creativity, tech skills, forces you to learn etc. So, you move forward in area of your career that many software people struggle: communication. If you write about stuff close to the area you work in then you'll find you reference your own blog posts a lot. Scott Hanselman recommends writing a blog post and referencing it an email instead of sending the same content in that email. There is some good stuff linked from https://www.hanselman.com/blog/your-words-are-wasted.

You overcome your problems by dealing with your anxiety. Why do you care about these specific aspects to the point that it blocks you from just writing and publishing? This is the differentiator between highly trafficked blogs and those that aren't. For a subset of people, noodling on these aspects and their blog template is the point itself. You need to decide on the true purpose, the why, and come up with a plan. There are lots of in-between steps like buying a nice template, drafting a lot of content to see if a name falls out of that, adopting a name like "Vibgyor5 on Software" etc.

This is my first post on HN, though I've been reading conversations here for years.

I would encourage the OP to create their own website and share it with their friends and workmates.

I went through a similar journey in 2020 and all I can say is that I wished I had done it sooner. I started writing articles when the pandemic hit, and bought a domain / published my articles there last year.

Reason for doing so was an overall lack of confidence in many things:

- Lack of confidence in my written English

- I had just changed jobs, leaving a technical role for a non-technical one. As I had joined a technical team as a Data Program Manager, I was afraid that my new workmates would have zero respect for me if they thought I was unable to do their job

Almost two years later, my personal website has gotten me some job offers through LinkedIn, and most importantly it has helped me feel more integrated within my new team. I'm writing "feel", because I have no evidence that I wouldn't have been accepted or respected if I hadn't had my website.

My English is still pretty bad, my technical skills are even worse. But I really see this website as a confidence booster for anything I do.

For those who might be interested: http://blanchardjulien.com

Thanks for reading!

As many have said, I often write about things which I couldn't find elsewhere online (or else didn't like what was available). For instance, I wrote some rough guides to learning measure theory and computational complexity as well as annual surveys of interesting books and papers I've read. I only post a few times a year, but you would be surprised how often someone shares your problem or is looking for the same info you are.

The biggest benefits are 1. seeing feedback from readers (either good or bad); 2. writing stuff down often helps one solidify their fuzzy thoughts and gives a clear goal to work toward.

My website: https://bcmullins.github.io