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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?

#101

Post by pixodaros »

paulpauper wrote: post #53

not really worth having a self-hosted blog. substack + twitter can work as well or better

In the first blogging boom (funded by Google to get people posting more so they had more results to serve and get them reading more to be advertised to) most blogs were hosted by LiveJournal, blogspot, Automattic, etc. In the second blogging boom (funded by Substack's investors) most are hosted by Substack, Autmattic, etc. Self-hosted blogs (and newsletter blogs) were always few in number, although the handful of big blogs tended to go independent or get a corporate or university sponsor.

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

#102

Post by scarface_74 »

harvodex wrote: post #87
scarface_74 wrote: post #14

I 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 would think if you aren't trying to develop a brand then you may as well just make the blog private. I love keeping a blog as my own private journal. I wouldn't want it public though because I can keep it as unstructured/messy as I want with it being private. Mostly a collection or random notes / thoughts / code that I wouldn't want a potential employer to get an impression of me from. It has huge value to me. The…

I don’t have a blog for anything professional. But I do have a blog that is a public personal journal of our frequent travel, including on an off “digital nomadding”.

I don’t have ads, affiliate links nor do I care about traffic or have any analytics. I doubt that it gets any real traffic. By keeping it public, the only benefit I see is that it encourages me to at least care about my writing. It’s just my spot on the internet.

https://digitalnomadder.micro.blog/

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

#103

Post by memhole »

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…

I’ve found it really helpful. By far one of the best things I’ve done is starting writing. There’s a long history of journaling or having a diary. And you’re totally right. Being able to send someone a link to something wrote is immensely valuable.

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

#104

Post by memhole »

bhupesh wrote: post #9

> How do you find readers I don't, that's what search engines are for. If people know what keywords to lookup, and are willing to go an extra mile (browse all pages of the Google search) they will eventually find your blog. If you have done a good job, it may land on the first page of search results. > Where do you share your content? Random short off-topic ramblings on X. Discussion oriented stuff on Reddit. Persona…

That’s a good instinct. I might try that.

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

#106

Post by ghilston »

To answer your question in the title, it is still worth it to me, as I get a lot of joy by writing. Pretty much as you put it, there's value to me for writing for it's own sake. Even if no one is reading. It's a cherry on top of someone stumbles upon my posts.

It just so happens two individuals have reached out to me in the past week, saying they enjoyed what I wrote and one of them cited that I saved them time. That just feels incredible.

To answer your questions I don't find my readers at all. I share my content when relevant on reddit or here. I keep writing because I enjoy it.

I'll link my blog post and will remove if asked to:

https://www.greghilston.com/

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

#108

Post by anileated »

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.

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

#109

Post by anileated »

nicce wrote: post #40
dewey wrote: post #5

Define "worth it", but I've written a blog post about some printer driver issue two years ago and it now happened twice that someone (Older person, not very technical) reached out over email and asked for some further help and I could walk them step by step through using a Terminal, booting into macOS recovery mode and fixing the issue. The Apple store and Epson told them to do a clean install so they were very grate…

If the "worth it" includes provable portfolio of skills, I don't know a better place than series of well-written blog posts. Other "worth it" could be the development of your writing skills, documenting own learning path and so on. Maybe something can be even useful for you as well later on. If you think "worth it" as a way to get attention, get job offers automatically e.g., likely not worth it unless it gets HN fro…

Note that anyone not living under a rock in 2025 would assume a significant probability that the articles in your blog are generated with an LLM, making it hardly a signal of skill.

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

#110

Post by medhir »

Yes — I set out to write a blogging platform to learn tools of the trade when I first was getting into the workforce in 2017. It’s been an on and off effort over years, and I don’t actually have that much writing to show.

Taking simonw’s advice (shout out since I see he also contributed to this thread), I’m trying to be less precious about my writing. I finally published a post that I’ve been wanting to see out in the world for years and it got to the front page of HN, which was of course immensely gratifying.

My motivation is partly “branding”, but also because I am a strong proponent of owning your own digital presence. Even if nothing ever came of it, there’s an artifact I can point to that’s a deep expression of my own sensibilities, and that’s what keeps me going.

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