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the closest to this most of us ever get, is the 'sense' of ownership evoked by competent managers.
notice that it is a 'sense of' ownership. not real ownership;
anything that I create by myself, on my own, is not work; it's a hobby, it's fun, like really good games.
by this point I even think of work as all the other things I must do to afford rent, food, electric bills, chores, etc.
"Own your own stuff" - Joan Jett's advice to new musicians.
The best solution is what the Indieweb folks called POSSE: Publish on your Own Site , Syndicate Elsewhere: https://indieweb.org/POSSE For instance, I might publish a clip on my own site first, then mirror it to places like YouTube, TikTok and Reddit so more people find it. Or post an article on my own site first, then repost it on Medium and Substack (with a canonical saying my own version is the original if possible…
But generally speaking, sometimes you have to leverage platforms that have the current attention of the world as that is where you will drive engagement to your platform. It is fairly rare to just win organic search traffic especially starting out so you have to "hijack" some attention here and there where applicable.
If you follow any notable person online who writes, creates content, etc, they are not afraid of going where everyone else is going whether that means they may have to be exclusive with their creations for awhile or whether that platform allows them to retain the rights to their creations.
At the end of the day, it all helps them build an audience that they can take anywhere and there's many possibilities depending on what you'd like to do with that platform.
Substack is that popular thing right now because it combines both the content and email list ownership that you can then take anywhere were it to go under tomorrow. It is a very accessible way to "own your work" today, especially for those who don't want to bother setting up a wordpress blog or similar.
My advice is always to forget about the details and just write. Set up a medium account, or substack, or blogspot, or get a VPS and install Wordpress or Ghost, or just tweet out your article line by line. If there is value in what you write then the readers will be there. And they will follow you if you decide to move your work elsewhere in the future.
Everyone tends to give this advice of owning your own work through a central location and syndicating everywhere else. In other words, building your own platform. But generally speaking, sometimes you have to leverage platforms that have the current attention of the world as that is where you will drive engagement to your platform. It is fairly rare to just win organic search traffic especially starting out so you ha…
love this. started to publish things on my personal site almost 10 years ago http://podviaznikov.com . I changed publishing tools so many times, but all the content still lives on the same domain name and I try to support same URLs.
Read most of the content here. You have a soothingly simple and brain-to-paper writing style I enjoy. Your essay called "Age of Questions" stuck with me. It's a similar frustration to one I've had with the world recently. https://podviaznikov.com/writings/age-of-questions
I obviously cannot analyze my own style because that is my style and how I write so reflection from other people are so fascinating.
And thank you for commenting on this specific essay. I’ve just read it again and unfortunately it still holds, almost 2 years since it was published.
But I think I am starting to develop my own tools to work against general tendencies at least in my personal life. I will think more about it!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read most of the content here. You have a soothingly simple and brain-to-paper writing style I enjoy. Your essay called "Age of Questions" stuck with me. It's a similar frustration to one I've had with the world recently. https://podviaznikov.com/writings/age-of-questions
what a compliment! I obviously cannot analyze my own style because that is my style and how I write so reflection from other people are so fascinating. And thank you for commenting on this specific essay. I’ve just read it again and unfortunately it still holds, almost 2 years since it was published. But I think I am starting to develop my own tools to work against general tendencies at least in my personal life. I w…
love this. started to publish things on my personal site almost 10 years ago http://podviaznikov.com . I changed publishing tools so many times, but all the content still lives on the same domain name and I try to support same URLs.
I like your style of post titles: short, lowercase, concise
1. You still own your work if you post it other places, just not the platform.
2. You own the platform if you host it on a VPS, but not the hardware.
3. You own the hardware if you host it at home, but still, only license the software which runs it.
4. Many more.
You want real advice? Ignore this guy, and just start. Most of you people concerned on where you should start blogging/pocasting don't even start because of all the choices and the fearmongering (like this guy).
Just write something and hit send. Not doing that is the only guarantee of failure. Everything else is fixable.