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Seven years ago, I started a blog called The Pragmatic Engineer. For three months, I wrote a post every two-three weeks. But no one really read them. So I took
by gregdoesit 4y ago
Seven years ago, I started a blog called The Pragmatic Engineer. For three months, I wrote a post every two-three weeks. But no one really read them. So I took a short break, which break turned into a month, then another, another… and I did not have motivation to write. Barely anyone read it, after all.
A few months after starting the blog, I saw a small traffic spike - maybe 30 visitors - from this site called Hacker News after a submission [1]. I never heard about HN before but it looked interesting so I started to visit it, and eventually registered to upvote stories I like.
Then, another few months later - when I had not published anything for 3-4 months - as I was checking out HN, I could not believe what I saw: a months-old post of mine was on the front page titled “Move Fast Without Breaking Things”. Traffic was so high, my site could barely keep up on shared hosting with MediaTemple, my blog running Wordpress.
There were 50+ comments discussing my post, versus the 2 that were on the blog itself (it had a commenting system). The comments were more insightful than I’ve ever seen for any of my blog posts. This was the HN post [2].
Now, this post did not “make me money”. But it WAS a turning point where I got validation that strangers on the internet find what I wrote interesting. And it gave me a motivation to write when no one read it, knowing that just because people are not interested in what I wrote today, people might find it interesting months or years later.
I kept writing my blog for years. Eventually, this blog served as the basis of The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter which I launched a year ago, and which is my new fulltime job and one of the most popular technology newsletters with over 120,000 people reading it. More than enough people chose to pay for it to make this a a viable fulltime career on the long run.
Thank you, Hacker News, for those first two submissions, all the comments, and the motivation it gave to keep writing. It was a turning point. I still remember how I could barely believe in March 2016 that so many people I never met can be interested in reading thoughts I put in writing.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10692734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10692734
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11374221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11374221
- taylodl 4y agoI've experienced the same thing. Blog posts I wrote almost 10 years ago are still getting traffic to this day. Sure, it's only 4-10 views per day (which is still thousands of views per year!) but sometimes it'll get referred by someone else's blog and there will be thousands of views over the course of a week or so. It's been fascinating watching this process over the years.
- bombcar 4y agoThis is the part of evergreen content that is often lost in the hustle and bustle of "latest posts" - I have a very crappy blog I mainly used as notes to myself on certain things, but posts still get hits and comments literally decades later. And that's with nearly no effort!
- agileAlligator 4y ago> I have a very crappy blog Drop the link mate
- bombcar 4y agoHere's an example post: http://blog.bombcar.com/2009/02/diablo-ii-on-vista.html http://blog.bombcar.com/2009/02/diablo-ii-on-vista.html Man it's been 12 years since I bothered posting, I probably should follow my own advice lol
- brightball 4y agoSimilar. People actually reading and discussing your work is highly motivating to keep doing it. I'm in the middle of a security and antifraud series now, motivated entirely by Brian Krebs [1] retweeting me after the Experian breach. The articles have gotten essentially zero traction on HN, but I'm having fun writing them and seeing them get attention on other avenues. I've been writing off an on for years now, thanks largely to the motivation that getting on the HN front page [2] gave me back in 2014. At some point, I think I would like to attempt to monetize my writing but I get enough enjoyment from doing it that I haven't ever bothered. [1] https://www.brightball.com/articles/automatically-reversing-account-takeovers https://www.brightball.com/articles/automatically-reversing-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8371249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8371249
- nindalf 4y agoI had a similar experience. I would write whatever I felt like writing and put it up on my blog, but the first real appreciation I got was on reddit and later HN. This doesn't make me any money, because I don't monetize my blog. But having people read, critique and enjoy my writing has given me immense satisfaction over the years. Can't put a price on that.
- PigiVinci83 4y agoOh, i read your substack and find it brilliant!
- Nashooo 4y agoThank you for your insightful articles and shedding more light on compensation data in europe! Your tri-modal article has been particularly well received!