4 ms·

how do i find anyone if i don’t live in a big city and don’t know anyone? why would anyone read my blog?

nickjj 5y ago
> how do i find anyone if i don’t live in a big city and don’t know anyone? I was in the same position. I lived in the suburbs and started right after graduating high school. I ended up writing about how I got started here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-freelance-business-as-a-software-developer https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-fre..., most things still apply today (minus covid restrictions). > why would anyone read my blog? A lot of this world revolves around problem -> solution. If you can write about a topic that solves a problem someone might have or at least get them closer to solving their problem then you're in a good spot. Think about it, if you're Googling for a specific programming problem and you run across a blog post that resonates with where you're at and helps you solve the thing you're struggling with, does it really matter who wrote it? For me it doesn't. Sure credentials help and I tend to ask myself how they applied their solution but I won't discount a post entirely based on the author's credentials.
dceddia 5y ago
> why would anyone read my blog? Because you’d write high quality articles that help people solve problems, share them around as you write them, slowly grow some viewership that way, and eventually start to get organic visitors from search engines. It’s not very fast though, and it helps to know what you hope to get out of it, so you can target your writing. I know people who get freelance leads from their writing, but I don’t get many myself. Just a few over the years I’ve been writing. I suspect this is because most of my articles are aimed at beginners, though. I would guess that higher-level stuff would attract more leads. One other benefit is that you have something to point to - I can say “Yeah I know React pretty well, I’ve been writing about it for about 5 years <here> and I wrote a book on it.” Gotta stress that it’s not fast, though.
- ushakov 5y ago
  last time i tried blogging someone stole the content and tried to pass it off as their own
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    I had people stealing my pastebin code, swap my name with theirs in the comments and post on their blog
  - dceddia 5y ago
    That sucks, sorry. People really have no shame. I've had it happen to me too, one guy cloned my whole site a while back :/
perrygeo 5y ago
Start or contribute to an open source project, then offer consulting services to your users. If you can solve one of their problems indirectly through your published code and/or writing, they already trust your technical abilities to some extent.

> how do i find anyone if i don’t live in a big city and don’t know anyone? I was in the same position. I lived in the suburbs and started right after graduating high school. I ended up writing about how I got started here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-freelance-business-as-a-software-developer https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-fre..., most things still apply today (minus covid restrictions). > why would anyone read my blog? A lot of this world revolves around problem -> solution. If you can write about a topic that solves a problem someone might have or at least get them closer to solving their problem then you're in a good spot. Think about it, if you're Googling for a specific programming problem and you run across a blog post that resonates with where you're at and helps you solve the thing you're struggling with, does it really matter who wrote it? For me it doesn't. Sure credentials help and I tend to ask myself how they applied their solution but I won't discount a post entirely based on the author's credentials.

dceddia 5y ago

> why would anyone read my blog? Because you’d write high quality articles that help people solve problems, share them around as you write them, slowly grow some viewership that way, and eventually start to get organic visitors from search engines. It’s not very fast though, and it helps to know what you hope to get out of it, so you can target your writing. I know people who get freelance leads from their writing, but I don’t get many myself. Just a few over the years I’ve been writing. I suspect this is because most of my articles are aimed at beginners, though. I would guess that higher-level stuff would attract more leads. One other benefit is that you have something to point to - I can say “Yeah I know React pretty well, I’ve been writing about it for about 5 years <here> and I wrote a book on it.” Gotta stress that it’s not fast, though.

ushakov 5y ago
last time i tried blogging someone stole the content and tried to pass it off as their own
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  I had people stealing my pastebin code, swap my name with theirs in the comments and post on their blog
- dceddia 5y ago
  That sucks, sorry. People really have no shame. I've had it happen to me too, one guy cloned my whole site a while back :/

perrygeo 5y ago

Start or contribute to an open source project, then offer consulting services to your users. If you can solve one of their problems indirectly through your published code and/or writing, they already trust your technical abilities to some extent.