I was in the same boat of thinking recently. I've decided that I'm going to blog for my own benefit first -- being a better thinker and writer. When I have something I feel worthy of sharing more widespread, I'll share it with my circle.
Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?
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Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?
#72I write for myself, and maybe a core group of friends, not random Web person.
https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2024/05/16/just-code
But this authenticity tends to make some new friends along the way.
Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?
#731) I write a personal blog [0] whose posts I sometimes share here [1]. I write mainly to understand what I think and to have a "prepared statement" for conversations I am having with friends. If I develop a brand at some point, great, but it's not the point. 2) Looking at some blogs that routinely do well on HN (e.g. Dan Luu [2], Jake Seliger, [3] or Jeff Kaufman [4]), I don't see a lot of SEO-/algo-aware optimizatio…
it helps to be smart and have credentials, which all those authors are/have
Definitely they're smart, but most of them just started writing and built up a following that way, and that became its own kind of credential.
Jeff Kaufman started writing in his freshman year of college (https://www.jefftk.com/p/webpage-up), Matt Y also started as a college student (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/01/11/matt-ygl...). Dan Luu's linkedin tagline is just '???'.
Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?
#74I write for myself. I don't track, I don't care if people read my blog. I do mention my blog on my resume together with code repositories. It is some kind of portfolio, and it is a good learning experience for me. I don't think that it is worth "building a brand", unless you want to specialize in building brands. It's not like someone at Google will ever read your blog and offer you a job; if you want to work at Goog…
> It's not like someone at Google will ever read your blog and offer you a job; if you want to work at Google, learn how to pass their interview process.
My blog literally had that effect from Google, many years ago -- although obviously I still had to go through the interview process. And my blog definitely helped me land my past and current jobs as recently as 2 years ago.
Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?
#75I at least write blog mostly for its own sake. I do not even bother checking statistics about page views or such, there are no ads, and I am doing it simply because it makes ( public part of ) my journal have sometimes bit more thoroughly written down notes about things I am doing anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?
#76> For those still maintaining personal blogs:
Hey that's me!
> How do you find readers?
I don't! Sometimes they find me, sometimes they don't.
> Where do you share your content?
On my blog!
> And most importantly - why do you keep writing?
I write rarely. I do it because I enjoy it. To collect my thoughts. To be able to come back to it later and feel mildly embarrassed. To be able to tell people "hey I wrote a blog post about that".
I'm not exactly sure what I'd gain if I had more readers. I get stray people from Google for the same keywords for the past 15+ years. Other posts which I think more worthwhile have zero readers. There is no point to it. Just like anything else, really.
Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?
#77I've maintained a domain and blog for nearly 20 years, but I find myself questioning why I want to write anymore. I don't know the answer, but it's interesting reading through others' perspectives. For me, it used to be because I enjoyed the tinkering aspect of maintaining the site and writing was an avenue towards that. Now, I just wonder who cares about my content, and more worried about writing something that gathers the wrong kind of attention - not because I'm worried about me, but because it's easy to just get internet-mad these days.
I work in tech, and it's probably good to have something out there, but I wouldn't assume it's a detriment not to. If nothing else, when I find some novel answer to a tech problem, maybe it'd be useful to document it for someone else. I don't think I'm doing anything esoteric or unique, but perhaps documenting is unique enough. But I'm not in it to growth hack or gain readers or anything. It'd be for me and anyone who happens to find what I have to say of interest.
Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?
#78I would go even further. Trying to develop a “brand” that stands above the noise isn’t worth it. That’s not saying writing isn’t important. I don’t think I understand a subject unless I can teach it, explain it and argue both sides about why you should and shouldn’t use it. If I were going to go into independent consulting as oppose to working for consulting companies, I might start a blog a year ahead of time. But i…
> I don’t think I understand a subject unless I can teach it, explain it and argue both sides about why you should and shouldn’t use it.
this is 100% why I write "courses" alongside my notes when learning something- forces you to think about pitfalls you fall into while learning, things you need to revisit and an overall story on how to introduce a topic.
but blogging? Outside of an immediate personal sphere I don't really see the need. Although that said I'm looking at things like [pico.sh](https://pico.sh/prose) just to play around with presentable notes/courses rather than my default obsidian stuff.
Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?
#79I don't really know if anyone reads my blog because I don't use any analytics or care to know.
There are a handful of times that I've written a post about something and then when someone offline expresses interest in X thing by coincidence, I can say "Ah, I actually know a little bit and you're welcome to read what I know in your spare time!"
I also have a thing of writing about any thoughts and anxities I might have at various milestones (starting new jobs + 5 year increments).
That recently came in handy with a mentee who was a bit like "I don't know what I'm doing, is this normal?". Saying it's normal is one thing but even better is being able to point to a post where I blurted out my mental state 10 years ago :)
I also don't share posts anywhere but I have a hint that at least one person is subscribed to my RSS feed (I think they told me something broke once) but part of the fun is not really knowing who's out there I think
The other value too is that just like trying to explain something to another person, the act of putting together a coherent piece of writing forces you to sort through your own thoughts (even if you think you understand the topic) which is valuable even if no one elses reads your own writing.
I re-read one of my very first posts not too long ago that I had completely forgotten about and thought "This is good stuff! I wish I knew about it earlier" haha
Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?
#80I write for myself. I don't track, I don't care if people read my blog. I do mention my blog on my resume together with code repositories. It is some kind of portfolio, and it is a good learning experience for me. I don't think that it is worth "building a brand", unless you want to specialize in building brands. It's not like someone at Google will ever read your blog and offer you a job; if you want to work at Goog…
> It's not like someone at Google will ever read your blog and offer you a job; if you want to work at Google, learn how to pass their interview process. My blog literally had that effect from Google, many years ago -- although obviously I still had to go through the interview process. And my blog definitely helped me land my past and current jobs as recently as 2 years ago.
> although obviously I still had to go through the interview process
So they did not exactly offer you a job, did they? Say you had applied spontaneously without this first contact, would it have been different?
I have had multiple people tell me that they got "recruited" by a FAANG. And when I ask details, what happened is more that some recruiter "convinced" them to apply and go through the interview process. So they did not really get offered a job: they applied and went through the process. I get a ton of messages on LinkedIn from all sorts of recruiters...
> And my blog definitely helped me land my past and current jobs
Was it because the companies discovered you through your blog? Or did you apply and put your blog on your resume as a portfolio?
My point is: I think that a blog is part of your portfolio, and I agree it may help when applying for a job. But I don't believe in "building a personal brand" such that a company magically offers you a job.