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Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

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Re: Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

#91

Post by simonw »

foxfired wrote: post #63

I don't know about being back, but it certainly isn't dead. A few years back, I used to get at least 10k readers a day. That number went down to less than 100 a day at it's lowest, I was writing 10 entries a year at most. Last year, I wrote just 4. One thing I failed to notice was that RSS was still active. So this year, I started consistently contributing, over 150 so far, and I see RSS picking up right where it lef…

I hadn't looked at my feed subscriber stats in a while, turns out I had around 6,000 at the start of 2025 and I'm up to around 12,000 now - very healthy!

I use my own server-side tracking to count them - I look out for the user-agent from feed software like Feedly and pull the number out of it:

  Feedly/1.0 (+https://feedly.com/poller.html; 694 subscribers; )
Here's my code for that: https://github.com/simonw/simonwillisonblog/blob/main/feedst...

Re: Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

#92

Post by notepad0x90 »

There are just not enough ways to discover personal blogs.

HN is a great source, but you'll notice over time there are always AskHN posts asking something like "What is a site like HN for..", and people trying to build HN clones.

Reddit was good for a while for this, but hasn't been for a long time.

I'm hoping people rediscover/reinvent slashdot.

Re: Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

#93

Post by jclarkcom »

stanmancan wrote: post #81
jclarkcom wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I restarted my blog after a 20 year break ( https://jonathanclark.com ) thanks to AI making taking out the drudgery.

You use AI to write your blog?

yes, for example this article including charts and summaries were generated by AI. https://jonathanclark.com/posts/ai-coding-million-lines-2025... Typically I act as an editor rather than a direct writer with cursor now replacing word

Re: Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

#94

Post by Brajeshwar »

simonw wrote: post #88

Here are some reasons to start a personal blog: 1. It's a great way to learn. Teaching something to someone else has always been the best learning tool, and writing about something with an audience in mind is an effective way to capture some of that value. 2. It can be a big boost in job hunting. As a hiring manager two of the most important questions I have about a potential candidate are: Can they code? Can they co…

I like Point No. 4. By now, I have enough articles to point to when people ask the same questions over and over. I have been asked, “Do you always have a blog post for these questions?”

Another advice or a deduction that I learnt from reading biographies and many historical books is — write as if you are writing for a stranger, even on your own personal blog/diaries/memoir — when you get older, your younger self will become a stranger and you will have forgotten a lot of things in that life you lived.

Re: Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

#95

Post by simonw »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #94
simonw wrote: post #88

Here are some reasons to start a personal blog: 1. It's a great way to learn. Teaching something to someone else has always been the best learning tool, and writing about something with an audience in mind is an effective way to capture some of that value. 2. It can be a big boost in job hunting. As a hiring manager two of the most important questions I have about a potential candidate are: Can they code? Can they co…

I like Point No. 4. By now, I have enough articles to point to when people ask the same questions over and over. I have been asked, “Do you always have a blog post for these questions?” Another advice or a deduction that I learnt from reading biographies and many historical books is — write as if you are writing for a stranger, even on your own personal blog/diaries/memoir — when you get older, your younger self will…

I really like that. It's absolutely true, I constantly find older stuff on my blog that I had entirely forgotten about and it's always interesting to get back in touch with past-me.

Re: Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

#96

Post by chemotaxis »

simonw wrote: post #49
loktarogar wrote: post #41

AI scrapes niche blogs, Google deranks or spam drowns them out. It's really not a good time to be starting niche blogs.

The most depressing thing about AI these days is seeing people cite it as a reason NOT to create useful content! Feels very nihilistic.

Bloggers write because in their value system, the result of this effort is a net positive. LLMs show up and, as far as some bloggers are concerned, turn that net positive into a negative. Bloggers stop blogging. That's rational behavior, not nihilism?

Re: Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

#97

Post by simonw »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #92

There are just not enough ways to discover personal blogs. HN is a great source, but you'll notice over time there are always AskHN posts asking something like "What is a site like HN for..", and people trying to build HN clones. Reddit was good for a while for this, but hasn't been for a long time. I'm hoping people rediscover/reinvent slashdot.

If you blog I think it's really important to develop a habit of linking to other people's blogs. That's how blog discovery used to work back in the 200xs and it can still work effectively today.

Re: Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

#98

Post by nazargon »

Peacefulz wrote: post #12

I want to start one myself. More of a public journal, but all the same. I keep having fits and starts and things distract me from the habit. That, and I'm never satisfied with my implementation in the end and I always want to try new or different things.

I started mine a couple of weeks back and I was surprised how useful it was to write down your process, as each post gives you a clear goal and helps you consolidate whatever you are working on.

Re: Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

#99

Post by carabiner »

emschwartz wrote: post #40

If you’re looking to put one up, try https://bearblog.dev (no connection, just appreciate Herman’s work). It’s got just the features you need, is built by a solo dev, and it’s got a very fair split between free and paid features. I used it to put up my personal site and have been very happy with the experience.

He needs to fix the "dd mm, yyyy" date format. It should be "dd mm yyyy" without a comma.

Re: Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

#100

Post by jasonjmcghee »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #92

There are just not enough ways to discover personal blogs. HN is a great source, but you'll notice over time there are always AskHN posts asking something like "What is a site like HN for..", and people trying to build HN clones. Reddit was good for a while for this, but hasn't been for a long time. I'm hoping people rediscover/reinvent slashdot.

There’s https://kagi.com/smallweb
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