I've been blogging since 1998 and can trace every major step forward in my career to my blog.
In 2003 I started writing about social networking and education - the replies to that blog post helped me kickstart my first startup.
In 2009 my blog posts about technology ethics led to me giving a talk at Harvard, which led to my becoming the first employee at a media tech startup.
That in turn led to me learning more about media tech accelerators. I applied to one with a new startup idea, and got in, in part because my blogging on the open web was picked up by the New York Times as part of a story.
Blogging for that startup helped us find customers and a like-minded community.
When that startup was acquired, blogging both externally and internally at the acquirer helped me make friends and share ideas that wouldn't have reached the right people otherwise.
And so on. Sharing ideas - not just tips, but thoughts about the why and who behind technology, as well as being vulnerable in public - has let me cut through from being a nobody in Edinburgh to someone with a pretty great technology career in SF.
And even if none of that had happened, writing is a wonderful way to structure your thoughts, consider what really matters, and reflect.
I recommend it. Start a blog - on your own domain, on webspace that you control.
Way back when Joel Spolsky was a high-profile blogger in the "starting your own software business" genre, I asked him for advice about my blogging, and he replied "Stop what you're doing and get your blog onto your own domain."
I had procrastinated because other platforms made everything so damn easy, and hosting my own blog meant being a part-time web admin. But I took his advice, and set up http://raganwald.com.
Some years after that, Posterous launched on HN, and I gave it a try. It was great, so very convenient! But I carefully kept copies of everything I posed there, and sure enough... One day it closed its doors, and I republished evrything on raganwald.com (some of my urls are raganwald.com/posterous/xxxxx.html, this is why).
But what about all the links to the old posterous articles? All dead, so some threads right here on HN point to dead URLs. This is bad for me and for HN. For this reason, I personally reject the strategy of posting on my own domain and republishing it simultaneously on some other platform. Everything I write is on a domain I control, and if I get less traffic, so be it. Running my own blog on my own low-traffic domain is like running a store in a building I own. The mall is very attractive, but I'm done with landlords.
p.s. There are hosted solutions that respect you your own domain. Some are free, like... Github Pages. And that's what I use. It is not essential that I own the server, just the URLs.
When I moved my blog to a domain I owned I added little notes to my old content saying "Previously hosted on ..." in the hope that searches for that content by URL would find the new homes.
Your blog is my favorite tech blog! I especially liked the blog series that contained to mock a mockingbird. Thank you for your excellent contact over the years!
> I recommend it. Start a blog - on your own domain, on webspace that you control.
Following up on this - any specific reason behind this? I am considering starting a newsletter soon to first gather audience and Substack looks like right solution for this without requiring much technical setup, esp. as a non-tech. Idea is to first start blogging, get into that mindspace, build an audience and then you can move it to a proper blog on your own website, if required.
There has been enough instances of platforms dying, pivoting, or just plain ignoring their users. It is OK to use a platform, but own the content or a backup of it that you can "walk away if needed." So, owning your own domain and perhaps pointing it to the blogspots, substacks, and WordPresses of the world as a tool is a OK. One day, you will need to relocate to another platform or tool(s).
If you own your own domain, and own the content, you can just walk out and it will still be alive. This is assuming that your content are more important (to you) than the platform.
Once, WordPress was the new MovableType/Blogspot, Medium the new Wordpress, and now Substack the new Medium. You never know.
I see your point and agree - Substack etc may exist today but might not in 2-3-5y down the line and it'd be valuable to have hold of your own writing from Day 1.
On a different note, what has been the value of "creative posts" and even "creative name for your blog" for you?
I am overthinking this but sometimes I find myself wondering whether my post is really all that useful, that my blog should have a more creative/captivating name to catch audience's eyes etc. Did you ever face that? If yes/no, how'd you suggest to overcome this?
>> On a different note, what has been the value of "creative posts" and even "creative name for your blog" for you?
Why do we name anything? There are many reasons, but it's important to distinguish your site from others. Content is the primary way to distinguish a blog because the original consumption tool was an RSS reader. Things have changed a lot, so more people go directly to most blogs.
If you have web design chops then there is an opportunity to create a distinct experience. The value of this is felt most by people who can appreciate good design, so unless you've goofed up usability, most people probably won't notice the design much. Don't mess up the usability because people remember bouncing from those sites or complain in comments here.
There are tons of developer blogs out there so unless you are notable in some area (big or small) for some set of readers then your name may not be enough. "Joel on Software" as a blog name stands out more than "Joel Spolsky's Blog". It is possibly easier to communicate verbally, signifies the content, feels informal, etc.
Does it matter if the content is only useful to you? It doesn't. The act of blogging improves your writing, creativity, tech skills, forces you to learn etc. So, you move forward in area of your career that many software people struggle: communication. If you write about stuff close to the area you work in then you'll find you reference your own blog posts a lot. Scott Hanselman recommends writing a blog post and referencing it an email instead of sending the same content in that email. There is some good stuff linked from https://www.hanselman.com/blog/your-words-are-wasted.
You overcome your problems by dealing with your anxiety. Why do you care about these specific aspects to the point that it blocks you from just writing and publishing? This is the differentiator between highly trafficked blogs and those that aren't. For a subset of people, noodling on these aspects and their blog template is the point itself. You need to decide on the true purpose, the why, and come up with a plan. There are lots of in-between steps like buying a nice template, drafting a lot of content to see if a name falls out of that, adopting a name like "Vibgyor5 on Software" etc.
They is whatever service you are signed up to that is outside of your control.
"Takes it all away" I think is really meant to mean a multitude of things. At the worst end is the service closing down unexpectedly. They may have been impacted by a cyberattack, haven't been paying hosting bills, never tested backups etc. Your site is under something.theirdomain.com and theirdomain.com is sold in a fire sale. Your audience can't get to the site and you can't redirect them.
More frequently there is an abhorrent change to the service from your perspective. Perhaps they start inserting ads into your content, charging for previously free features, or even repurposing your content per their terms that you didn't read when signing up to coolservice.com. These kinds of changes are more insidious. On the lowest end, they may just change their system to be a worse experience for you with some new user interface that you don't like.
You can see how these things are going to go from the start. Startup invests in a nice user interface and they are declared the new darling without any viable business model. They can only operate this way for a while because it's unsustainable. Things change for the worse and the pattern is repeated. Sometimes the new kid considers how to make a sustainable business which can be an anathema in their startup community and things stay better for longer. I've not studied Substack, but I think they may have thought more about this.
>> But WordPress? Isn't it controlled entirely by you?
WordPress.com hosts WP for you. WordPress.org offers the open source version of the product.
They could be referencing wordpress.com, which is the hosted version of WordPress, rather than wordpress.org which is the open-source self-hosted version.
I think the best strategy is to do both. Publish on your own site so you have control and aren't fully dependent on someone else's service, and then also post to Substack and wherever else your audience is.
I don't think Medium has a lot of cachet at this point but I used to publish on my own blog and cross-post anything I thought have broader interest to Medium. Lately, I'm mostly on content marketing sites which have promotion machinery. I think this year I will start posting more on my personal Blogger site and do professional stuff on a new hosted Wordpress site.
The platforms age out, change, censor, etc. also, you may go through periods over time where you are less active - and the long term persistence of your writings is more valuable if in one place.
Having something you own allows for drift in subject matter over time.
I use Substack for the newsletter associated with my blog. It's pretty good! But it's as much a blogging platform as a newsletter engine, and you should consider what your exit strategy might look like if it ever shuts down. At a minimum, I'd configure a custom domain to use with it.
A blog is a long-term endeavor. You want to be able to run it long after any particular platform has declined. Ideally, it should be your portfolio that follows you throughout your career. That means you should minimize dependencies.
Also: a domain means links add value to your online identity, not the platform you happened to choose.
One reason is that someone else's platform means you don't have full control over presentation and discoverability.
Also, at some point in their existence each platform start to decline.
People move to the next platform and lose some of their readers. A few years later the same thing happens again, and readership is reduced again.
Personally I have had a lot of fun adding random bits to my website such as small tools, some explorations on creative expression with CSS and things like that.
No shade to Edinburgh! I miss it every day. But I'll tell you this: there was no startup ecosystem there worth talking about in 2003, and a lot of people who would side-eye you and tell you to get a real job.
In 2003 I started writing about social networking and education - the replies to that blog post helped me kickstart my first startup.
In 2009 my blog posts about technology ethics led to me giving a talk at Harvard, which led to my becoming the first employee at a media tech startup.
That in turn led to me learning more about media tech accelerators. I applied to one with a new startup idea, and got in, in part because my blogging on the open web was picked up by the New York Times as part of a story.
Blogging for that startup helped us find customers and a like-minded community.
When that startup was acquired, blogging both externally and internally at the acquirer helped me make friends and share ideas that wouldn't have reached the right people otherwise.
And so on. Sharing ideas - not just tips, but thoughts about the why and who behind technology, as well as being vulnerable in public - has let me cut through from being a nobody in Edinburgh to someone with a pretty great technology career in SF.
And even if none of that had happened, writing is a wonderful way to structure your thoughts, consider what really matters, and reflect.
I recommend it. Start a blog - on your own domain, on webspace that you control.