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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?

#151

Post by kcartlidge »

I blog for the (admittedly infrequent) pleasure of it; I have no expectations, and my page hits confirm that.

In the last 180 days there's been 2507 visitors to the home page, 2803 to the robots file, and 5965 to a page that shows some domains I might sell (but otherwise has no content at all).

The actual article pages averaged between 90 and 170 visitors total per page over those 180 days.

As a numbers thing it isn't worth it (for me). However I have had recruiters cold-contacting me based on my blog (and github), and a publisher wanting me to edit and peer review a technical book. So it can open up new possibilities regardless of the scale of the readership.

(Edit: I don't re-post anywhere else as whilst I have accounts on the socials they are unused placeholders)

Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?

#152

Post by zug_zug »

I've been doing it for ~20 years off-and-on. Initially I thought I'd find an audience/community that resonated, but never did. So no.

My experience has been that I have to post to HN about 6 times to have a shot at making front-page, and even when I do I feel like from the comments that I didn't succeed at communicating what I was trying to.

I also don't get any organic interaction. (https://think-twice.me/)

Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?

#155

Post by teleforce »

simonw wrote: post #82

The fact that so few people blog these days makes blogging even more influential than it used to be. You can establish yourself as something of a global expert on some topic just by writing about it a few times a month over the course of a year! Don't expect people to come to your blog. Practice https://indieweb.org/POSSE - Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere - post things on your blog and then tweet/toot…

>Just writing about a topic forces you to double-check your understanding and do a little bit more research. It's a fantastic way of learning more about the world even if nobody else ever reads it.

This is such a wise and golden advice

Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?

#156

Post by Sharon_Q »

Today's society is indeed very fragmented and restless. However, I believe there is always a demand for high-quality content. Last year, my friend started a personal business media platform, producing in-depth reports on business practices. This earned her over $50,000 in a year.

Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?

#157

Post by anileated »

lproven wrote: post #130
anileated wrote: post #108

Maintaining a blog in 2025 is worth it if you do not mind almost all of your readers being LLMs that ingest your work and repackage in ways that prevent you from being aware of your actual human readership, often without credit and for profit of their operators.

This is an important point. A sad, dispiriting one, but relevant and insightful.

Thanks. My comment may have been overly cynical, and things are not so black and white yet, but extrapolating the trend from the last couple years is depressing.

Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?

#158

Post by alp1n3_eth »

rickcarlino wrote: post #19

Most of your questions revolve around acquiring readers and sharing content. I am not sure my reasons for blogging are the same as yours, but I will say that it has been beneficial for me, both personally and for my career. During job searches, it is helpful to have a collection of writing samples that show I am competent and indeed a real human rather than an LLM fabrication. On a personal level, it’s been very rewa…

Totally agree with this. It's nice to have something to point at for writing samples, to show some experience in a field, and to get ahold of you.

I have a link aggregator (Bento.me) that points to my blog, GitHub, cool projects to get involved with, etc. I feel like this also shows a level of enthusiasm / involvement with the field / community as a whole as well.

I saw your other comment and also agree with the email exclusion. My blog has the ability to have comments, my GitHub has open repos, and there is a calendar link. If someone wants to dig for my email they can (as it's very public at this point lol), but I'd prefer it not be the main route I handle online comms through from people reaching that link agg.

Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?

#159

Post by alp1n3_eth »

I write mainly for myself, but it has other benefits as well. The act of blogging forces me to actually follow through with pieces, as I'm putting them out there. If I'm just "taking notes", it won't be as well laid out (at least until later revisions) and is very utilitarian.

Blogging forces myself to write for others, which allows me to do things like research a subject more deeply and include supporting evidence. Aside from that, it's nice to have a resource that shows enthusiasm about a field, and there are things you can point to if writing samples are necessary for a job, grant, or publication.

I think there are a lot of other benefits I haven't covered. I will preface this saying all of my blogs are also first drafts about random things. Sometimes they align with my field, but a lot of the time they are edge-cases or in an adjacent field, and sometimes they're just ramblings about random topics. Finding your reason to blog is the best way to do it, because if you have no reason or motivation to, why do it?

Re: Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?

#160

Post by i-dont-remember »

jpc0 wrote: post #136

Your post actually inspired me to want to start blogging so I will share what I'm thinking about. Plain HTML only with a single page and hyperlinks into a specific article. Very basic styling and no JS, don't even necessarily want to have a css file, just inline in the header. Very likely just setting font family to sans and be done with it. I sometimes play with esoteric stuff that might be fun to blog about. Stuff…

if you want to get started writing super quick, you can also take a look at some of the super minimalist platforms that are basically as you describe - like https://bearblog.dev/ and https://mataroa.blog/.

I've stumbled on both from submissions to HN and they have become my recommendations for friends that want to write, especially the couple who are prone to jumping down technical rabbit holes & not ever getting to the writing.

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