4 ms·

I feel like most of the complaints that make people think blogging is dead is because it's hard to "build an audience", but I've never really understood why tha

I feel like most of the complaints that make people think blogging is dead is because it's hard to "build an audience", but I've never really understood why that matters. I have had a blog more or less non-stop since 2001, and never once was "building an audience" a goal. My blog is written for my own self, as a place that records discoveries, knowledge, and thoughts so I can read them again later, shared so that they might be useful to others and as a way to connect with friends and family who already know about my blog directly. I actually get plenty of organic traffic from search engines, simply because a lot of my writings over the years are notes on troubleshooting technical issues or instructions for how to set up a self-hosted service, things I wrote so I could find them again later without any audience other than myself considered, but still high value due to their detail. Why do we need an "audience"? Many of the most honest and interesting contemporaneous writing in human history was written as private memoirs or journals, and blogging originated out of journaling. There's never been a need for an audience to derive value from writing, and that hasn't changed, we've just accepted the bargain social media has tempted us with to "make us famous" off of feeding their user-generated content machine. Being famous was never the goal of starting a blog, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that many many people continue to blog without any desire to be made famous.

ghaff 5y ago
It's closely related to how, in some circles, everything needs to be a "side hustle" or otherwise be connected to making money in some way.
strict9 5y ago
>Why do we need an "audience"? It's not a requirement, especially for those like you. But most people write with the hope that people read their writing. We can debate the importance of this but can't deny the motivation of why people write. If you don't care about an audience, why spend the effort to maintain an online presence that requires time and money?
- tristor 5y ago
  > If you don't care about an audience, why spend the effort to maintain an online presence that requires time and money? 1. The cost is minimal ($5/mo) 2. The time is roughly the same as not putting it online, as the time consuming activity is the writing itself. 3. Putting it online makes it easier for me to access my own writings from anywhere when I need to jog my memory. I've literally pulled out my phone and went to one of my blog posts to share an embedded photo of something with someone in person while telling the story I shared on the post in a social gathering, much the same way others will use google on their phone to do similar. 4. Putting it online makes it possible for others to access it. I don't /need/ an audience, but I also think that "sharing is caring" and that sharing my thoughts, experiences, and knowledge online allows for the Internet to grow as a repository of human knowledge in some small way further enhancing the world.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
I think there are degrees of this. On the one hand, it's unreasonable to expect that you will have thousands of visitors every day to your blog. Some may get that, but most never will. On the other hand, it's nice to get visitors that can pass the Voight-Kampff test. Googlebot, Bingbot, Yandexbot and that lot are cool and all, but it's somewhat discouraging when they are your only readership. I get writing for yourself is a thing, but then you might as well not put it online. The greatest part of the blogosphere is the exchange of ideas, the dialogue. There is a serious discoverability problem in personal websites in general. Search engines and algorithmic content aggregators are part of the problem, but I think an understated part is that we've stopped linking to other websites. It's like people think they need to trap the visitor on their site by having no exits and only promoting their own stuff. Feeling trapped is not a good feeling. What is a good feeling is discovering something cool, the experience of exploration feels good. We should treat our visitors to that. Blog rolls, link lists, whatever you want to call it, they help your readers find more cool websites. That helps the blogosphere/indieweb/personal website-space in general. It also helps search engines find those websites and understand their importance better. Linking is free, it's not a marriage proposal either. You can just link to something that you liked, because you liked it.
- eitland 5y ago
  It is connected. It used to be that it was good advice to avoid linking out because it could very easily affect ranking negatively, or at least give competitors (either real or imaginary) an advantage. ... and the advice was also that if you did link you should add sone attribute to tell Google you didn't endorse the site. This was a good idea for comment fields but I think it became more of a general gospel in SEO circles. Personally I don't care about Google anymore. I link to whatever I want. Wish more people would do the same instead of "building an audience".
- ghaff 5y ago
  I'd add one other option if you care about audience but don't care about monetization and that is to write for various sites. It restricts you subject matter and style of course. On the other hand, you usually get at least some copyediting and a built-in audience. Your company may even have blogs/sites you can write for. I still (fitfully) maintain a personal blog that's also an index to my podcasts but most of my professional blogging/writing these days goes to a variety of established sites.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
paulpauper 5y ago
I feel like most of the complaints that make people think blogging is dead is because it's hard to "build an audience", but I've never really understood why that matters. I have had a blog more or less non-stop since 2001, and never once was "building an audience" a goal. M Some people hope to actually make a living with their writing. Some are..look at all the people with 1000s of subs on Substack. How can insights be useful to others if no one sees them. That is the whole point of having an audience.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  The golden age of blog was long ago back, which was not only before current kinds of social media but also in a time when it was literally impossible to make a living from writing a blog, even a quite popular one, because the monetization options simply were not there, and the total addressable audience was smaller as well. So going back to that certainly would not (by itself) mean the death of blogging.
- zerkten 5y ago
  >> How can insights be useful to others if no one sees them. That is the whole point of having an audience. Your point ignores what the poster says and then doubles down on "audience". People setting out purely to "make money" often focus heavily on "building an audience" rather than "crafting content for an audience". There is a very subtle difference which results in them burning out before they hit critical mass, or strong competition from people who are ostensibly just writing for fun. The point of writing down your insights, even with only a minimal audience, is that you capture and refine them. They may be worth much more to an individual in a consulting reference than as Substack subs. The context always matters though, but not everyone can have 1000s of subs on Substack or whatever replaces it.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    >People setting out purely to "make money" often focus heavily on "building an audience" rather than "crafting content for an audience" The issue is not just burnout. It's that an emphasis on pageviews can (though doesn't necessarily) lead to crafting content that attracts clicks and engagement rather than content that actually benefits a potential audience (and yourself). It's not binary of course. Headline writers have been crafting titles that entice readers to read the rest of the text before there were clicks. But it's certainly more prevalent on the web.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
> I have had a blog more or less non-stop since 2001, and never once was "building an audience" a goal. My blog is written for my own self, as a place that records discoveries, knowledge, and thoughts so I can read them again later, shared so that they might be useful to others and as a way to connect with friends and family who already know about my blog directly. I’ve been doing it since the last century. In fact, my personal site[0] is stale as hell, and still has the original table-based layout that was considered “cutting edge,” back then. I’ve never really given a damn whether or not anyone reads my stuff. This is where I tend to dump my thoughts, these days[1]. [0] https://cmarshall.com https://cmarshall.com [1] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany
- xook 5y ago
  What one may call "stale" I might call fun and interesting. That website certainly applies; I always enjoy seeing nice little places like that with an Old Web look!
- susam 5y ago
  While I did not have access to the Internet in the previous century, I began blogging in 2001 as soon as I got access to the Internet at my university. At first I played a little with GeoCities. Then I began developing my own personal website. It was not a reverse-chronological list of posts that we see in typical blogs today. Instead it was a loose collection of webpages with thoughts that I cared to jot down and share with others. Yes, it used table-based layout too! And then later I overzealously overengineered it with ASP-based dynamic pages. I have now lost that original ASP code. But I still have some of its content and maintain it in blog format[1]. I take quick notes and share quick tidbits here. It now uses CSS and is statically generated with a simple Common Lisp program. [1] https://susam.in/maze/ https://susam.in/maze/
themodelplumber 5y ago
Congrats on 20 years! That's an impressive milestone. I agree about the audience factor. It's kind of funny to receive emailed tips from readers who describe themselves as an obvious target audience, and therefore the following changes should be made to the blog... :-)
rolisz 5y ago
Agreed. For my personal blog, I don't care about things like SEO. I just write whatever crosses my mind. I learned something cool this week? Let me write it down. I learned something that makes me more productive or scratches an itch? Let me write a short, 300 word post. And some of those posts then start bringing in organic traffic. Who would have thought that so many people have trouble with vmmem on Windows? Or that so many people want to bridge networks with a Synology device? And I've lost count how many times I searched on my own blog for a solution to a problem I had :))
drakonka 5y ago
I agree. I've been blogging since the early 2000s and my blog is basically just a (sometimes retroactively embarrassing) brain dump for myself. Earlier on I cared more about comments and stats and such, but nowadays I just write into the ether as diary of sorts.
ubermonkey 5y ago
My blog turns 21 this year. It grew out of a mailing list I was using to distribute amusing or interesting things to friends. My "readership" is still pretty much only my friends, but it's still fun to do, and still nice to have a place to put these things that isn't Facebook or whatever.
gumby 5y ago
It’s the difference between someone with something to say and someone with something to sell.

ghaff 5y ago

It's closely related to how, in some circles, everything needs to be a "side hustle" or otherwise be connected to making money in some way.

strict9 5y ago

>Why do we need an "audience"? It's not a requirement, especially for those like you. But most people write with the hope that people read their writing. We can debate the importance of this but can't deny the motivation of why people write. If you don't care about an audience, why spend the effort to maintain an online presence that requires time and money?

tristor 5y ago
> If you don't care about an audience, why spend the effort to maintain an online presence that requires time and money? 1. The cost is minimal ($5/mo) 2. The time is roughly the same as not putting it online, as the time consuming activity is the writing itself. 3. Putting it online makes it easier for me to access my own writings from anywhere when I need to jog my memory. I've literally pulled out my phone and went to one of my blog posts to share an embedded photo of something with someone in person while telling the story I shared on the post in a social gathering, much the same way others will use google on their phone to do similar. 4. Putting it online makes it possible for others to access it. I don't /need/ an audience, but I also think that "sharing is caring" and that sharing my thoughts, experiences, and knowledge online allows for the Internet to grow as a repository of human knowledge in some small way further enhancing the world.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

I think there are degrees of this. On the one hand, it's unreasonable to expect that you will have thousands of visitors every day to your blog. Some may get that, but most never will. On the other hand, it's nice to get visitors that can pass the Voight-Kampff test. Googlebot, Bingbot, Yandexbot and that lot are cool and all, but it's somewhat discouraging when they are your only readership. I get writing for yourself is a thing, but then you might as well not put it online. The greatest part of the blogosphere is the exchange of ideas, the dialogue. There is a serious discoverability problem in personal websites in general. Search engines and algorithmic content aggregators are part of the problem, but I think an understated part is that we've stopped linking to other websites. It's like people think they need to trap the visitor on their site by having no exits and only promoting their own stuff. Feeling trapped is not a good feeling. What is a good feeling is discovering something cool, the experience of exploration feels good. We should treat our visitors to that. Blog rolls, link lists, whatever you want to call it, they help your readers find more cool websites. That helps the blogosphere/indieweb/personal website-space in general. It also helps search engines find those websites and understand their importance better. Linking is free, it's not a marriage proposal either. You can just link to something that you liked, because you liked it.

eitland 5y ago
It is connected. It used to be that it was good advice to avoid linking out because it could very easily affect ranking negatively, or at least give competitors (either real or imaginary) an advantage. ... and the advice was also that if you did link you should add sone attribute to tell Google you didn't endorse the site. This was a good idea for comment fields but I think it became more of a general gospel in SEO circles. Personally I don't care about Google anymore. I link to whatever I want. Wish more people would do the same instead of "building an audience".
ghaff 5y ago
I'd add one other option if you care about audience but don't care about monetization and that is to write for various sites. It restricts you subject matter and style of course. On the other hand, you usually get at least some copyediting and a built-in audience. Your company may even have blogs/sites you can write for. I still (fitfully) maintain a personal blog that's also an index to my podcasts but most of my professional blogging/writing these days goes to a variety of established sites.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

paulpauper 5y ago

PeterisP 5y ago
The golden age of blog was long ago back, which was not only before current kinds of social media but also in a time when it was literally impossible to make a living from writing a blog, even a quite popular one, because the monetization options simply were not there, and the total addressable audience was smaller as well. So going back to that certainly would not (by itself) mean the death of blogging.
zerkten 5y ago
>> How can insights be useful to others if no one sees them. That is the whole point of having an audience. Your point ignores what the poster says and then doubles down on "audience". People setting out purely to "make money" often focus heavily on "building an audience" rather than "crafting content for an audience". There is a very subtle difference which results in them burning out before they hit critical mass, or strong competition from people who are ostensibly just writing for fun. The point of writing down your insights, even with only a minimal audience, is that you capture and refine them. They may be worth much more to an individual in a consulting reference than as Substack subs. The context always matters though, but not everyone can have 1000s of subs on Substack or whatever replaces it.
- ghaff 5y ago
  >People setting out purely to "make money" often focus heavily on "building an audience" rather than "crafting content for an audience" The issue is not just burnout. It's that an emphasis on pageviews can (though doesn't necessarily) lead to crafting content that attracts clicks and engagement rather than content that actually benefits a potential audience (and yourself). It's not binary of course. Headline writers have been crafting titles that entice readers to read the rest of the text before there were clicks. But it's certainly more prevalent on the web.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

> I have had a blog more or less non-stop since 2001, and never once was "building an audience" a goal. My blog is written for my own self, as a place that records discoveries, knowledge, and thoughts so I can read them again later, shared so that they might be useful to others and as a way to connect with friends and family who already know about my blog directly. I’ve been doing it since the last century. In fact, my personal site[0] is stale as hell, and still has the original table-based layout that was considered “cutting edge,” back then. I’ve never really given a damn whether or not anyone reads my stuff. This is where I tend to dump my thoughts, these days[1]. [0] https://cmarshall.com https://cmarshall.com [1] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany

xook 5y ago
What one may call "stale" I might call fun and interesting. That website certainly applies; I always enjoy seeing nice little places like that with an Old Web look!
susam 5y ago
While I did not have access to the Internet in the previous century, I began blogging in 2001 as soon as I got access to the Internet at my university. At first I played a little with GeoCities. Then I began developing my own personal website. It was not a reverse-chronological list of posts that we see in typical blogs today. Instead it was a loose collection of webpages with thoughts that I cared to jot down and share with others. Yes, it used table-based layout too! And then later I overzealously overengineered it with ASP-based dynamic pages. I have now lost that original ASP code. But I still have some of its content and maintain it in blog format[1]. I take quick notes and share quick tidbits here. It now uses CSS and is statically generated with a simple Common Lisp program. [1] https://susam.in/maze/ https://susam.in/maze/

themodelplumber 5y ago

Congrats on 20 years! That's an impressive milestone. I agree about the audience factor. It's kind of funny to receive emailed tips from readers who describe themselves as an obvious target audience, and therefore the following changes should be made to the blog... :-)

rolisz 5y ago

Agreed. For my personal blog, I don't care about things like SEO. I just write whatever crosses my mind. I learned something cool this week? Let me write it down. I learned something that makes me more productive or scratches an itch? Let me write a short, 300 word post. And some of those posts then start bringing in organic traffic. Who would have thought that so many people have trouble with vmmem on Windows? Or that so many people want to bridge networks with a Synology device? And I've lost count how many times I searched on my own blog for a solution to a problem I had :))

drakonka 5y ago

I agree. I've been blogging since the early 2000s and my blog is basically just a (sometimes retroactively embarrassing) brain dump for myself. Earlier on I cared more about comments and stats and such, but nowadays I just write into the ether as diary of sorts.

ubermonkey 5y ago

My blog turns 21 this year. It grew out of a mailing list I was using to distribute amusing or interesting things to friends. My "readership" is still pretty much only my friends, but it's still fun to do, and still nice to have a place to put these things that isn't Facebook or whatever.

gumby 5y ago

It’s the difference between someone with something to say and someone with something to sell.