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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?

#221

Post by carlosjobim »

raffael_de wrote: post #179
ricardobeat wrote: post #2

> But with the revival of personal blogs well underway Is it? I haven't seen anyone in my circle return to blogging, nor kids of this generation. Discoverability is going to be a massive problem, since search engines are dead. Maybe word-of-mouth through social media is enough?

> nor kids of this generation. (I fear) the blog of this generation's kids is called TikTok or whatever and the form is video instead of text.

Almost right. The blog of this generation is called YouTube, and there's millions of such videos, with the author mostly talking.

Why? YouTube pays creators, blogs don't.

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

#222

Post by Havoc »

bowsamic wrote: post #155

The issue with blogging is that now people are absolutely brutal about quality. I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing my understanding online on a blog, even if I’m an expert. I just know that what I write will be endlessly picked on, probably mocked in some cliquey discord channel

Could just disable comment

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

#224

Post by DLion »

There are so many benefits around having a personal blog that I'm surprised about reading all these negative comments.

I started blogging about tech and security when I was 13/14 years old in my native language. Then, when I felt more mature, I switched to a new blog where English was the main language. I started improving my language skills, getting some donation from kind strangers for my blog posts and using it as a self-branding forever running-side project.

Now, 20 years later I still have my personal blog and I still write about tech, but only recently I created some "personal related" tabs, like the "/now" page, enriching it every month or having a more personal about page. Why? Because I like going to a blog a see that behind that address there is a real person with emotions and dreams, it's like entering in their home and have a look around.

1. Improve your language skills

2. Self-branding

3. Memorize better topics you care about

4. Share what you learned with others

About LLM, I don't care if they scrape my blog, I use LLMs every day, and if some stuff I write helps to enrich an LLM with a positive impact I would be more than happy to let it happens, the more we write, the less fake-news and low-quality content would ingest and used.

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

#225

Post by cbzbc »

qouteall wrote: post #220
cbzbc wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are people using to edit entries - because while markdown is fine, a lot of the time I want to be able to drag in screenshots, snippets of other documents like rfcs and so on. So it ends up being easier to make those notes for myself rather than push them into anything publishable.

You can use Obsidian to edit markdown. Obsidian allows easy paste of images.

Is there a Obsidian -> Hugo/Zola/Jekyll thing that's relatively robust?

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

#226

Post by OakNinja »

It’s interesting how you end up being a part of the current trends whether you know it or not.

I actually set up a blog on the 15th. No real content yet but I’ve almost written a first real post. Seeing this made me chuckle - I thought _I_ had an original thought around missing blogs but I’m obviously just a part of the hive mind. I truly hope this trend is here to stay.

I also want to share this video on the topic ”The reason no one has hobbies anymore”, it was shared by a podcast I was listening to the other day and I think it’s well worth watching. https://youtu.be/IUhGoNTF3FI

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

#227

Post by nickjj »

I'm not sure about this.

I've released a new post every week for 10 years straight.

My traffic in the last 2 years is worse than the first 2 years. At the blog's peak I was getting around 180k unique visitors a month for years.

I was able to build a whole business around selling tech courses and doing contract work for the last 10 years but now traffic is so little that this is no longer feasible (not even close).

Just looking at the numbers, it's very likely related to Google not sending as much traffic as they used to because they either inline my content on their search engine results or AI results are used now instead of people visiting individual sites.

I still do it because I enjoy the process and my main motivator was never money but at the same time you need to be able to sustain yourself too. It's a bummer to be honest.

On that note, a ton of great non-money related opportunities came my way due to posts I've written in the past so I won't be stopping. I hope these continue.

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

#228

Post by runningmike »

simonw wrote: post #148
ksec wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem so far is with cost. I dont like recurring fees. I could pay a one-time fee for say 100 pages and last an eternality ( or 50 years or something ). I also dont like subscription, and it has nothing to do with subscription fatigue, it is just the way I manage my money since before Youtube or Netflix took off. And so far I haven't seen any viable options. And right now I use HN comments as more like a…

GitHub Pages gives you a neat URL - yourname.github.io - and is free forever and even lets you run GitHub Actions for free to operate a static site builder.

“Free” is not free. The dependency on MS should be evaluated for you as user and for your visitors ..

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

#229

Post by zelphirkalt »

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…

About point 2: I have yet to have a job interview, in which the interviewer has even taken a look at my website. Well, actually I don't know that, of course, but what I want to say is, that none so far showed any sign or indication of having taken a look, and as a consequence also no sign or indication of knowing anything about any of my showcased projects. In 95% of the cases it was just that they want to do their one thing, their one test, and not consider the candidate as a person at all. No time for that these days, I guess.

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

#230

Post by jjgreen »

jszymborski wrote: post #147
ksec wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem so far is with cost. I dont like recurring fees. I could pay a one-time fee for say 100 pages and last an eternality ( or 50 years or something ). I also dont like subscription, and it has nothing to do with subscription fatigue, it is just the way I manage my money since before Youtube or Netflix took off. And so far I haven't seen any viable options. And right now I use HN comments as more like a…

Codeberg or GitHub pages are free. For static website hosting, NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is... well... nearly free. https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/pricing

Likewise for GitLab, and a "nice" url .gitlab.io
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