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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?

#281

Post by ghaff »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #211
SunlitCat wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a trend I've noticed as well over the past few years. It somehow feels like it's becoming increasingly “important” to make money from whatever you do on the internet. The idea that you can just create things because you enjoy it, or because you want to share what you've made with others in the hope that they might like it and offer interesting feedback, seems to be fading away. I mean, I get it: the economic s…

I have seen it said in hacker circles that people in their teens and twenties now are not just more reluctant to share stuff for free like FOSS, but they are even outright suspicious of such endeavors. To a generation who grew up on platforms and apps that maximize engagement for maximum profit, a community that doesn’t do that looks like a bunch of weirdos, maybe a cult.

I'm not sure I've seen that personally although most of the tech folk I know are at least somewhat older.

In fairness, I do think "side hustles" and the like have become much more normalized as the default. And even if the odds are poor, there are least enough anecdotes of Substack authors, influencers, and the like making enough money to perk many people's interest.

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

#282

Post by wdm0006 »

I think the main point of a personal blog is to write consistently about things you think are neat, and allow the world to find it, assess it, and those who also find those things neat will stick around.

What is neat means different things to different people, for some it may be one nice narrow thing, for some it may be an erratic mix of topics tied together by the tiniest of strings. But what makes personal blogs different than marketing blogs for SEO is the wanton disregard for all things not-neat.

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

#285

Post by garganzol »

I don't think personal blogs have made a comeback. Most modern blogs are ego-boosting camouflage, the same content you'd find on social media. This kind of content isn't intended to disseminate useful information, but rather to hijack your emotions and force you to react in a way you've been told. It's a form of psychic vampirism.

I have fond memories and miss profoundly the innocuous purity of 1994-2005 internet era. Back then, the content was created mostly by enthusiasts, not by attention seekers.

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

#286

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

ghaff wrote: post #279
biztos wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additional factors that come to mind: the slow realization that you could be writing for an audience of one (yourself) after a brief surge of "famous bloggers"; and the rise of other forms of writing (social media, etc) that at least give you the illusion of an immediate audience. "Engagement metrics" and so on -- even if they represent the opposite of attention. I think a lot of what used to go onto blogs now goes e…

>I think a lot of what used to go onto blogs now goes elsewhere That's been true of me. A paragraph or three that I would once have done as a blog now slip neatly and easily into social media of various sorts. Going to try to do something about that next year but this year ended up crazy for various reasons.

Social media might be getting less attractive for that, though. Compare Reddit now to ten years ago, and you can see that even on more serious subreddits, everyone’s comments have become very short, often little more than a single line. If one posts a couple of solid paragraphs as a reply, one looks like an autistic weirdo info-bombing.

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

#287

Post by eloisant »

nickjj wrote: post #227

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). Ju…

I think it's a combination of:

- Google no longer sending traffic

- Users staying on social media (facebook/x/instagram/youtube/tiktok) and not even clicking external links

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

#288

Post by mythrwy »

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…

But how will they know what they like if they haven't read it?

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

#289

Post by geekamongus »

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 started following your blog when you were like, 14. Cool to see you here. I've kept up my blog for 25 years, and you were an inspiration along the way.

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

#290

Post by spragl »

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…

6. It is good training for your communication skills.

But write it yourself, dont let LLMs do it. Otherwise forget the sixth reason.

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