6 ms·

You should blog even if you have no readers

207 points by nathanmarz 16y ago

Tycho 16y ago
Does anyone have advice for a would-be blogger who has no real expertise or industry experience or sources? Is a blogger without those things a contradiction in terms? I'm a decent writer when it comes to formulating essays, and occasionally I say insightful things, but when it comes to broadcasting an opinion piece to the world it doesn't seem viable. Should I just stick to posting on HN? Anyone else start from this situation? (ie. blogs seem like a good IT career enhancing asset but see no reason why you personally should blog)
nazgulnarsil 16y ago
a further piece of advice. don't let perfectionism keep you from writing. don't be afraid to make mistakes and contradict yourself. getting it all out on paper will help you form a more coherent picture of your own opinions.
c00p3r 16y ago
Write if you really have something to say, rather than when you must write something out of habit or inertia. ^_^
moab9 16y ago
Unfortunately, my blogs all start off sounding like a PBS narrator and end up sounding like Colonel Kurtz.
tokenadult 16y ago
You should also edit Wikipedia even if you only use dead-tree reference sources. Indeed, if you are familiar with dead-tree reference sources, you especially should edit Wikipedia. Editing Wikipedia is good practice in saying something in a verifiable, neutral point of view manner that anyone can challenge.
kadavy 16y ago
"Blog like nobody is reading" is what I always say.
codexon 16y ago
I blogged, and I haven't gotten much out of it even though I have over 500 rss subscribers and showed up multiple times on the front page of HN and Reddit. 1. I have not become a better reader. In fact, it made me more impatient because of #2. 2. Writing blog posts did not make me smarter. It made me realize that a blog post's success is a balancing act between being controversial and saying what people want to believe. I also learned that the average time spent reading even my longest technical articles was around 20 seconds. Yes, even programmers have the attention span of a peanut. And true enough, I often saw comments where someone says "but you didn't do X" when I wrote I did X in the 2nd sentence. So my articles have gotten shorter and shorter, and so has my patience for reading other articles. 3. Anything else that came out of it has not really been a benefit so far. I am not even a quarter of the way through the minimum payout for Google Adsense. Needless to say, it is not even feasible to pay hosting costs this way.
- Ardit20 16y ago
  Perhaps the problem is that you are focusing too much on what people want. For sure to have your audience in mind when writing is important, but to have your audience be your master leaves you aiming for the lowest common dominator. Maybe you should take less care of your readers and be your own harshest critic. Do you like your post, do you think it is great, might it need something added or taken away. There are many people out there all with their opinions and moods of the day and prejudices and.... you can't please everyone. Please yourself first and foremost, then perhaps you will find a readership you love :)
  - codexon 16y ago
    If I was writing for the lowest common denominator, I would be writing about lolcats and celebrities. The problem is that even the high-brow audience coming from Hacker News and the programming subreddit (where most of my audience is from) have tiny attention spans unless they are reading what they want to believe. People won't even spend 20 seconds to read your post unless you are a celebrity like Paul Graham. If you like the idea of a personal diary that no one reads, put it in a text file. Put it online, and you'll have to deal with spammers, hackers, and critics that don't even bother to read the article and insult you. If you want to see what I mean by this, take a look at the comments of my most commented posts. It is really discouraging.
mcgraw 16y ago
Everyone starts at 0. Write something you feel pationate about. Spread the word and you're bound to get 1 person to read it. With Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites spreading the word is easier than ever. If you have core knowledge of something people will want to read it. People follow people to see what they've had for dinner these days.
lionhearted 16y ago
Completely agree. After meaning to do it for a while, I started doing a personal blog at this start of this month, at least once a day now. The big thing for me is I blog whatever observations I have that are quick, even if they're just okay. Then I keep a list of things that'd take me longer to write. I remember looking at the bottom of a coffee lid and thinking about whether it should be face-up or face-down, so I took two pictures of it and posted it here - http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=38 http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=38 - it's just sort of junk, but it helped get into the rhythym of writing every single day, no matter what. A lot of my entries are pretty mundane, but a couple of them have been quite popular and gotten spread around my friends and a couple other people I've met. I think the biggest thing is that you're going to bad when you start. If you want encouragement, go look at the early works of prolific bloggers - often poorly written, tentative, scared, making mistakes, and writing for no audience. But doing it makes you improve. The biggest pieces of encouragement I got were reading the early works of Stephen King and the first Sherlock Holmes book. The Sign of Four (first Sherlock book) wasn't all that great of a piece of writing and was a commercial flop, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle kept going until his short stories caught on. Being a lover of Sherlock Holmes, I'm glad he did it. Also, it's encouraging towards getting started.
danilocampos 16y ago
Even if you blog to an app running on localhost that no one will ever see, you're going to be better for it. One of the best ways to fully understand anything (idea, argument, problem, feature, goal, failure, whatever) is to have to wrap words around it. Writing forces you to think things through. You end up knowing more about your subject than before you began. Guaranteed. When is that ever bad news?
dnewcome 16y ago
You get the most value out of blogging if you publish it. Period. Writing drafts is great, but it just isn't the same as putting it out there. It's like practice vs. performance. No amount of practice can take the place of the experience gained by performance.
ndimopoulos 16y ago
I second what mcgraw says. I would also add: If you have a topic that you love talking about, then go ahead with the blog. You will need to have a regular posting schedule. Try getting a few posts in draft mode (ready to be published). This way you will have something to post even if you do not have the time to post at that interval (weekly, biweekly etc.) Letting your readers get used to a regular posting schedule will help a lot. Twitter/Facebook are good tools you can use to make people aware of your blog. If you have something interesting to say, people will follow you :) Good luck!
euroclydon 16y ago
I spent a good deal of time this past week putting my first serious blog post together after reading Steve Yeggie's You Should Blog: http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/you-should-write-blogs http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/you-should-write-bl... Here it is: http://joshpearce.posterous.com/children-have-bad-business-sense http://joshpearce.posterous.com/children-have-bad-business-s...
kenjackson 16y ago
The problem I have with blogging is the opportunity cost. While blogging may help me as a coder. Does it help more than me actually writing code, or commenting my existing code, or reading an article, or a paper, or spending time reading other peoples code? I suspect more than anything blogging helps you become a better blogger, and then there are some minor secondary effects. I'm not convinced that if I have zero readers that blogging is the best use of my time.
- jefffoster 16y ago
  I started blogging purely as a way of improving my coding skills, and I was pretty cynical about it. From blogging I've had good feedback about how I can improve, and the mere act of keeping a blog has kept me motivated enough to keep learning and keep posting. In my opinion, definitely worth the cost.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Where did you get the feedback from? From readers or just from yourself as you blogged? I just feel like I have 20 little projects I'd like to do, but don't have time. Is blogging the top thing on the queue?
    - jefffoster 16y ago
      From myself (telling the story seems to give a lot of feedback) and from readers. And sometimes the flames of Reddit even contain useful information! Blogging is definitely not top of the queue, but if I'm going to go to the effort of learning something new, I might as well write some notes on it and the extra effort of putting it into a blog seems worth it for me.
jakarta 16y ago
Blogging has been a really positive experience for me. I started with 0 readers 2.5 years and write about a pretty specific niche within investing. I didn't really promote myself. Basically, the first 6 months of blogging I focused on just creating original content. I hated that most blogs were just links to articles by the MSM. It paid off and other well known aggregators started linking to my stuff. Since then it's been a really wild and rewarding ride. I've had a chance to consult on stories for reporters at the Wall Street Journal and posts featured in the Financial Times, NYTimes, WSJ. I've even been contacted by some of my heroes (really great investors who've been written about in books like The Big Short). Now, in a couple of weeks I'm being flown out to interview with a firm that I never dreamed of applying to. All because they read some of my posts and enjoyed them. The key to me is just to start writing. Write all the time and strive to continuously improve on it. I think that if you produce good content, people will come. Most of my most popular posts are things I've worked really hard on. Some examples include me reading 5 years worth of message board posts to track down everything that person X said or visiting the library to dig up a physical copy of a report from the 1980s to scan and then post. If you create value, readers are going to keep coming.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Obvious question... blog link? :-)
  - solutionyogi 16y ago
    Seconded. I love to read about investing/trading and would definitely like to read blog by an individual who is producing original content.
- Alex3917 16y ago
  "If you create value, readers are going to keep coming." People subscribe to your blog based on expected future value, not based on perceived past value. Unfortunately there are many scenarios where every single one of your past posts could have high perceived value, but the expected future value is relatively low. For example, if each blog post is about a completely different topic. There are very very few writers who can get away with this, and most of the ones who do are only able to do so because the writing follows a predictable pattern in some other way, e.g. Malcolm Gladwell. The sad truth is that how often you update your blog is usually a better predictor of the number of readers you'll get than the value of the actual writing. In the end it's maybe 25% about having good ideas and helping people and 75% about putting on a show.
dpapathanasiou 16y ago
I think of mine primarily as "notes to myself", for things I'm likely to want to read again in the future. E.g. what to do if apt-get upgrade fubars lilo (http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=295 http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=295), or how to setup mercurial on shared hosting (http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=82 http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=82), etc. They're much easier to find again on the blog, versus in some random config or readme file, lost in my myriad archive folders. Also, if any of those posts are helpful to other people with the same problem(s), I'm happy to be able to help anyone who finds them.
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  I've been doing math-related entries on mine for the same reason. I just recently finished college, and the difficulties of the college algebra and the remedial algebra classes are fresh in my mind. I've been taking all the stuff the books explained poorly (which is everything) and making it as clear as possible.
HSO 16y ago
This scratches an itch I've had for some time now. I've been off and on with a blog of my own. The problem is, I change my answers to the following questions all the time, so I've been trapped in a cycle for some time now, put it online, take it down again, put it back up, take it down,... Here are some of the negative ones, how do you guys answer these (or do they never even come up for you)? - "I know writing is good for me. But why write for other people, why open myself up like this? If it's all in the process, why post or publish it, after all, when I'm done writing, I'm done." - "If I write something, expose myself, and nobody reads it, will I not look ridiculous?" - "There is so much noise out there, why would I think I'm not just adding to it? Let's all be quiet for a time." - "If I have a good insight, why put it out there and take the risk that someone will come and 'steal' it or adapt it and win big?" - "Will I not be easily manipulable if I put my thoughts and preferences out there? Someone could take me for a ride by using this material to their advantage or fun" - "Ok, blogging/writing/publishing stuff can make you known and perhaps even popular. Now, shouldn't you optimize for 'what people want'? Or leave out unpopular things?" (but where is the fun in writing if you can't say what you just want to say anymore?) Also, I sometimes read what I wrote years back and cringe at the stupidity or attitude. How embarrassing if all this was online and somehow remained available even after I took it down. But by definition, you don't know that what you are writing is stupid or full of shit while you are writing it.
- dan00 16y ago
  "There is so much noise out there, why would I think I'm not just adding to it? Let's all be quiet for a time." Most of the noise is generated by people who never ask themselves this question.
- dpapathanasiou 16y ago
  There have been many, many times where I was struggling with some technical issue and I found a solution to the same (or similar) problem on someone's blog. Even if you don't get a lot of traffic or comments, you may be able to help someone in the future. That alone is a good reason to do it.
  - ora600 16y ago
DTrejo 16y ago
750words.com makes it really easy for me to get the words out. I think I'll start transforming those into posts.
bandhunt 16y ago
Anyone want to argue why you should NOT blog? I'm debating starting to blog, but as a startup founder I'd rather put every minute into improving my company - or is writing a blog going to improve my company? Thoughts?
- TGJ 16y ago
  Say something stupid and the rest of the world gets to see it. Write about a particular belief or political stance and it may come back at you. Start a journal and keep that for a month. If you like it and can devote time, then think about making it public.
- anatoly 16y ago
  Few people are able to blog and then _not_ worry about who's reading it and who isn't, why there aren't any comments or there are some hostile/stupid ones, etc. etc. This can become a major source of distraction, and for some, obsession.
ThomPete 16y ago
Blogging is Brain Logging I use blogging to get specific on some of my loose thoughts get around to do some research etc. Luckily this seems to be thoughts others are sharing. But even without the traffic I would still be blogging. And yes it does open for opportunity I have to say.
sfphotoarts 16y ago
Isn't this why we used to write essays in school? Blogging is a self imposed homework schedule of essay writing, except rather than being graded by a teacher we get our grade from readership.
- ciupicri 16y ago
  It's graded if you have any readership and if the readership is qualified enough to grade you. I know a couple of blogs who seem to be (very) good when you look at the comments, yet the most successful posts are about something trivial and controversial and there's almost no in-depth analysis. In a way, these blogs are like reddit compared to HN.
grellas 16y ago
Writing is like exercise for the brain. Not all of us will write like Paul Graham, or anywhere even close to his level, but all of us can benefit from forcing ourselves to think more carefully about our ideas, and there are not many better ways to do so than to attempt to express them in some systematic written form. Writing is also an iterative process. You write about something once and this causes you to focus upon what you are saying in ways that you had not done before. You re-visit the issue later and often derive more insights on the topic. You get comments and criticisms from others and this also causes you to examine your ideas more carefully. You also may find that, even if your ideas are reasonably well developed, your method of presenting them may be sub-standard. From experience, for example, you learn that it rarely if ever pays to take a cheap shot at someone and, when you get called on it, you learn to express yourself with more class the next time. So, you learn not only to express yourself intelligently but also in a manner that is appealing and that removes unnecessary barriers to understanding. Do it often enough and you will improve and potentially make an impact. But, even if you don't, you will be better off for the exercise. And that is the main point of this fine piece, a point well worth making.
anonymousDan 16y ago
What if you are working for a company who might be a bit reticent about letting their employees blog about whatever they want? How would you go about broaching the subject so as to get around this? Comments other than 'quit your job' would be useful!
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  Make a case for a policy change to the person in charge.
greenlblue 16y ago
The internet at this point is just noise and I don't see how encouraging people to contribute to that noise is going to make things better.
ezyang 16y ago
As part of a bet between friends, I began blogging at the beginning of this year. (The bet was: write a blog post a week, and if you don't, you have to pony up money for a shared food/beer pool.) I aimed for something a little more ambitious: three blog posts a week. I've managed it so far, but it takes a lot of time and most of my effort is making sure a post comes out on time. One of the great things about this is that I've really had to focus in on collecting interesting topics to write about; the bad thing about this is that most of the iterative parts of the writing process are cut out; I'm exercising just the "initial drafting" writing muscle, so to speak. I want to keep blogging three times a week until the end of this year, for the sake of continuity, but from there, I think I'll probably tune down the frequency and work on the post-processing aspects of writing a little more. I'd love to hear peoples stories about how their writing process has changed over time.
flexterra 16y ago
I have a blog and almost no readers. My take on this is that I write for myself some sort of public notebook.

207 points by nathanmarz 16y ago

Tycho 16y ago

Does anyone have advice for a would-be blogger who has no real expertise or industry experience or sources? Is a blogger without those things a contradiction in terms? I'm a decent writer when it comes to formulating essays, and occasionally I say insightful things, but when it comes to broadcasting an opinion piece to the world it doesn't seem viable. Should I just stick to posting on HN? Anyone else start from this situation? (ie. blogs seem like a good IT career enhancing asset but see no reason why you personally should blog)

nazgulnarsil 16y ago

a further piece of advice. don't let perfectionism keep you from writing. don't be afraid to make mistakes and contradict yourself. getting it all out on paper will help you form a more coherent picture of your own opinions.

c00p3r 16y ago

Write if you really have something to say, rather than when you must write something out of habit or inertia. ^_^

moab9 16y ago

Unfortunately, my blogs all start off sounding like a PBS narrator and end up sounding like Colonel Kurtz.

tokenadult 16y ago

You should also edit Wikipedia even if you only use dead-tree reference sources. Indeed, if you are familiar with dead-tree reference sources, you especially should edit Wikipedia. Editing Wikipedia is good practice in saying something in a verifiable, neutral point of view manner that anyone can challenge.

kadavy 16y ago

"Blog like nobody is reading" is what I always say.

codexon 16y ago

I blogged, and I haven't gotten much out of it even though I have over 500 rss subscribers and showed up multiple times on the front page of HN and Reddit. 1. I have not become a better reader. In fact, it made me more impatient because of #2. 2. Writing blog posts did not make me smarter. It made me realize that a blog post's success is a balancing act between being controversial and saying what people want to believe. I also learned that the average time spent reading even my longest technical articles was around 20 seconds. Yes, even programmers have the attention span of a peanut. And true enough, I often saw comments where someone says "but you didn't do X" when I wrote I did X in the 2nd sentence. So my articles have gotten shorter and shorter, and so has my patience for reading other articles. 3. Anything else that came out of it has not really been a benefit so far. I am not even a quarter of the way through the minimum payout for Google Adsense. Needless to say, it is not even feasible to pay hosting costs this way.

Ardit20 16y ago
Perhaps the problem is that you are focusing too much on what people want. For sure to have your audience in mind when writing is important, but to have your audience be your master leaves you aiming for the lowest common dominator. Maybe you should take less care of your readers and be your own harshest critic. Do you like your post, do you think it is great, might it need something added or taken away. There are many people out there all with their opinions and moods of the day and prejudices and.... you can't please everyone. Please yourself first and foremost, then perhaps you will find a readership you love :)
- codexon 16y ago
  If I was writing for the lowest common denominator, I would be writing about lolcats and celebrities. The problem is that even the high-brow audience coming from Hacker News and the programming subreddit (where most of my audience is from) have tiny attention spans unless they are reading what they want to believe. People won't even spend 20 seconds to read your post unless you are a celebrity like Paul Graham. If you like the idea of a personal diary that no one reads, put it in a text file. Put it online, and you'll have to deal with spammers, hackers, and critics that don't even bother to read the article and insult you. If you want to see what I mean by this, take a look at the comments of my most commented posts. It is really discouraging.

mcgraw 16y ago

Everyone starts at 0. Write something you feel pationate about. Spread the word and you're bound to get 1 person to read it. With Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites spreading the word is easier than ever. If you have core knowledge of something people will want to read it. People follow people to see what they've had for dinner these days.

lionhearted 16y ago

Completely agree. After meaning to do it for a while, I started doing a personal blog at this start of this month, at least once a day now. The big thing for me is I blog whatever observations I have that are quick, even if they're just okay. Then I keep a list of things that'd take me longer to write. I remember looking at the bottom of a coffee lid and thinking about whether it should be face-up or face-down, so I took two pictures of it and posted it here - http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=38 http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=38 - it's just sort of junk, but it helped get into the rhythym of writing every single day, no matter what. A lot of my entries are pretty mundane, but a couple of them have been quite popular and gotten spread around my friends and a couple other people I've met. I think the biggest thing is that you're going to bad when you start. If you want encouragement, go look at the early works of prolific bloggers - often poorly written, tentative, scared, making mistakes, and writing for no audience. But doing it makes you improve. The biggest pieces of encouragement I got were reading the early works of Stephen King and the first Sherlock Holmes book. The Sign of Four (first Sherlock book) wasn't all that great of a piece of writing and was a commercial flop, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle kept going until his short stories caught on. Being a lover of Sherlock Holmes, I'm glad he did it. Also, it's encouraging towards getting started.

danilocampos 16y ago

Even if you blog to an app running on localhost that no one will ever see, you're going to be better for it. One of the best ways to fully understand anything (idea, argument, problem, feature, goal, failure, whatever) is to have to wrap words around it. Writing forces you to think things through. You end up knowing more about your subject than before you began. Guaranteed. When is that ever bad news?

dnewcome 16y ago

You get the most value out of blogging if you publish it. Period. Writing drafts is great, but it just isn't the same as putting it out there. It's like practice vs. performance. No amount of practice can take the place of the experience gained by performance.

ndimopoulos 16y ago

I second what mcgraw says. I would also add: If you have a topic that you love talking about, then go ahead with the blog. You will need to have a regular posting schedule. Try getting a few posts in draft mode (ready to be published). This way you will have something to post even if you do not have the time to post at that interval (weekly, biweekly etc.) Letting your readers get used to a regular posting schedule will help a lot. Twitter/Facebook are good tools you can use to make people aware of your blog. If you have something interesting to say, people will follow you :) Good luck!

euroclydon 16y ago

I spent a good deal of time this past week putting my first serious blog post together after reading Steve Yeggie's You Should Blog: http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/you-should-write-blogs http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/you-should-write-bl... Here it is: http://joshpearce.posterous.com/children-have-bad-business-sense http://joshpearce.posterous.com/children-have-bad-business-s...

kenjackson 16y ago

The problem I have with blogging is the opportunity cost. While blogging may help me as a coder. Does it help more than me actually writing code, or commenting my existing code, or reading an article, or a paper, or spending time reading other peoples code? I suspect more than anything blogging helps you become a better blogger, and then there are some minor secondary effects. I'm not convinced that if I have zero readers that blogging is the best use of my time.

jefffoster 16y ago
I started blogging purely as a way of improving my coding skills, and I was pretty cynical about it. From blogging I've had good feedback about how I can improve, and the mere act of keeping a blog has kept me motivated enough to keep learning and keep posting. In my opinion, definitely worth the cost.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Where did you get the feedback from? From readers or just from yourself as you blogged? I just feel like I have 20 little projects I'd like to do, but don't have time. Is blogging the top thing on the queue?
  - jefffoster 16y ago
    From myself (telling the story seems to give a lot of feedback) and from readers. And sometimes the flames of Reddit even contain useful information! Blogging is definitely not top of the queue, but if I'm going to go to the effort of learning something new, I might as well write some notes on it and the extra effort of putting it into a blog seems worth it for me.

jakarta 16y ago

Blogging has been a really positive experience for me. I started with 0 readers 2.5 years and write about a pretty specific niche within investing. I didn't really promote myself. Basically, the first 6 months of blogging I focused on just creating original content. I hated that most blogs were just links to articles by the MSM. It paid off and other well known aggregators started linking to my stuff. Since then it's been a really wild and rewarding ride. I've had a chance to consult on stories for reporters at the Wall Street Journal and posts featured in the Financial Times, NYTimes, WSJ. I've even been contacted by some of my heroes (really great investors who've been written about in books like The Big Short). Now, in a couple of weeks I'm being flown out to interview with a firm that I never dreamed of applying to. All because they read some of my posts and enjoyed them. The key to me is just to start writing. Write all the time and strive to continuously improve on it. I think that if you produce good content, people will come. Most of my most popular posts are things I've worked really hard on. Some examples include me reading 5 years worth of message board posts to track down everything that person X said or visiting the library to dig up a physical copy of a report from the 1980s to scan and then post. If you create value, readers are going to keep coming.

kenjackson 16y ago
Obvious question... blog link? :-)
- solutionyogi 16y ago
  Seconded. I love to read about investing/trading and would definitely like to read blog by an individual who is producing original content.
Alex3917 16y ago
"If you create value, readers are going to keep coming." People subscribe to your blog based on expected future value, not based on perceived past value. Unfortunately there are many scenarios where every single one of your past posts could have high perceived value, but the expected future value is relatively low. For example, if each blog post is about a completely different topic. There are very very few writers who can get away with this, and most of the ones who do are only able to do so because the writing follows a predictable pattern in some other way, e.g. Malcolm Gladwell. The sad truth is that how often you update your blog is usually a better predictor of the number of readers you'll get than the value of the actual writing. In the end it's maybe 25% about having good ideas and helping people and 75% about putting on a show.

dpapathanasiou 16y ago

I think of mine primarily as "notes to myself", for things I'm likely to want to read again in the future. E.g. what to do if apt-get upgrade fubars lilo (http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=295 http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=295), or how to setup mercurial on shared hosting (http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=82 http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=82), etc. They're much easier to find again on the blog, versus in some random config or readme file, lost in my myriad archive folders. Also, if any of those posts are helpful to other people with the same problem(s), I'm happy to be able to help anyone who finds them.

mkr-hn 16y ago
I've been doing math-related entries on mine for the same reason. I just recently finished college, and the difficulties of the college algebra and the remedial algebra classes are fresh in my mind. I've been taking all the stuff the books explained poorly (which is everything) and making it as clear as possible.

HSO 16y ago

This scratches an itch I've had for some time now. I've been off and on with a blog of my own. The problem is, I change my answers to the following questions all the time, so I've been trapped in a cycle for some time now, put it online, take it down again, put it back up, take it down,... Here are some of the negative ones, how do you guys answer these (or do they never even come up for you)? - "I know writing is good for me. But why write for other people, why open myself up like this? If it's all in the process, why post or publish it, after all, when I'm done writing, I'm done." - "If I write something, expose myself, and nobody reads it, will I not look ridiculous?" - "There is so much noise out there, why would I think I'm not just adding to it? Let's all be quiet for a time." - "If I have a good insight, why put it out there and take the risk that someone will come and 'steal' it or adapt it and win big?" - "Will I not be easily manipulable if I put my thoughts and preferences out there? Someone could take me for a ride by using this material to their advantage or fun" - "Ok, blogging/writing/publishing stuff can make you known and perhaps even popular. Now, shouldn't you optimize for 'what people want'? Or leave out unpopular things?" (but where is the fun in writing if you can't say what you just want to say anymore?) Also, I sometimes read what I wrote years back and cringe at the stupidity or attitude. How embarrassing if all this was online and somehow remained available even after I took it down. But by definition, you don't know that what you are writing is stupid or full of shit while you are writing it.

dan00 16y ago
"There is so much noise out there, why would I think I'm not just adding to it? Let's all be quiet for a time." Most of the noise is generated by people who never ask themselves this question.
dpapathanasiou 16y ago
There have been many, many times where I was struggling with some technical issue and I found a solution to the same (or similar) problem on someone's blog. Even if you don't get a lot of traffic or comments, you may be able to help someone in the future. That alone is a good reason to do it.
- ora600 16y ago

DTrejo 16y ago

750words.com makes it really easy for me to get the words out. I think I'll start transforming those into posts.

bandhunt 16y ago

Anyone want to argue why you should NOT blog? I'm debating starting to blog, but as a startup founder I'd rather put every minute into improving my company - or is writing a blog going to improve my company? Thoughts?

TGJ 16y ago
Say something stupid and the rest of the world gets to see it. Write about a particular belief or political stance and it may come back at you. Start a journal and keep that for a month. If you like it and can devote time, then think about making it public.
anatoly 16y ago
Few people are able to blog and then _not_ worry about who's reading it and who isn't, why there aren't any comments or there are some hostile/stupid ones, etc. etc. This can become a major source of distraction, and for some, obsession.

ThomPete 16y ago

Blogging is Brain Logging I use blogging to get specific on some of my loose thoughts get around to do some research etc. Luckily this seems to be thoughts others are sharing. But even without the traffic I would still be blogging. And yes it does open for opportunity I have to say.

sfphotoarts 16y ago

Isn't this why we used to write essays in school? Blogging is a self imposed homework schedule of essay writing, except rather than being graded by a teacher we get our grade from readership.

ciupicri 16y ago
It's graded if you have any readership and if the readership is qualified enough to grade you. I know a couple of blogs who seem to be (very) good when you look at the comments, yet the most successful posts are about something trivial and controversial and there's almost no in-depth analysis. In a way, these blogs are like reddit compared to HN.

grellas 16y ago

Writing is like exercise for the brain. Not all of us will write like Paul Graham, or anywhere even close to his level, but all of us can benefit from forcing ourselves to think more carefully about our ideas, and there are not many better ways to do so than to attempt to express them in some systematic written form. Writing is also an iterative process. You write about something once and this causes you to focus upon what you are saying in ways that you had not done before. You re-visit the issue later and often derive more insights on the topic. You get comments and criticisms from others and this also causes you to examine your ideas more carefully. You also may find that, even if your ideas are reasonably well developed, your method of presenting them may be sub-standard. From experience, for example, you learn that it rarely if ever pays to take a cheap shot at someone and, when you get called on it, you learn to express yourself with more class the next time. So, you learn not only to express yourself intelligently but also in a manner that is appealing and that removes unnecessary barriers to understanding. Do it often enough and you will improve and potentially make an impact. But, even if you don't, you will be better off for the exercise. And that is the main point of this fine piece, a point well worth making.

anonymousDan 16y ago

What if you are working for a company who might be a bit reticent about letting their employees blog about whatever they want? How would you go about broaching the subject so as to get around this? Comments other than 'quit your job' would be useful!

mkr-hn 16y ago
Make a case for a policy change to the person in charge.

greenlblue 16y ago

The internet at this point is just noise and I don't see how encouraging people to contribute to that noise is going to make things better.

ezyang 16y ago

As part of a bet between friends, I began blogging at the beginning of this year. (The bet was: write a blog post a week, and if you don't, you have to pony up money for a shared food/beer pool.) I aimed for something a little more ambitious: three blog posts a week. I've managed it so far, but it takes a lot of time and most of my effort is making sure a post comes out on time. One of the great things about this is that I've really had to focus in on collecting interesting topics to write about; the bad thing about this is that most of the iterative parts of the writing process are cut out; I'm exercising just the "initial drafting" writing muscle, so to speak. I want to keep blogging three times a week until the end of this year, for the sake of continuity, but from there, I think I'll probably tune down the frequency and work on the post-processing aspects of writing a little more. I'd love to hear peoples stories about how their writing process has changed over time.

flexterra 16y ago

I have a blog and almost no readers. My take on this is that I write for myself some sort of public notebook.