5 ms·

I've been blogging on wordpress.com since 2006 and think writing for the Internet still underrated (a point Patrick Collison and many others have also made). At

I've been blogging on wordpress.com since 2006 and think writing for the Internet still underrated (a point Patrick Collison and many others have also made). At some point I got a custom domain, which I then thought I'd renewed but hadn't (ambiguous emails from Wordpress) and switched to a different custom domain. I see a lot of complaints, often justified, about the dominance of the big social media companies, but not nearly as many people deciding to go their own, off those sites.

acedTrex 2y ago
The internet is still plenty open, people just prefer the path of least resistance
- raytopia 2y ago
  I think the biggest issue today is it's hard to find blogs and other tiny websites via search engine. You almost have to be on social media for people to find your website.
  - z0r 2y ago
    Hacker news is how I find things worth reading these days. If this place didn't exist my internet consumption would be cut in half (at least).
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    I have to admit, I have never really understood this need to be found and this focus on discoverability. Unless you are monetizing your audience, why does it matter whether 10, 1000 or 100,000 people read your blog? If I write something on the Internet, or release some open source program, or post a video, I’m not making any money off of views: I’m doing it for myself. So I don’t really ultimately care how many people read it or view it. I firmly believe the best content on the Internet is not necessarily the stuff optimized for search engines and audience-building. We shouldn’t really care about that.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      When people were blogging because it was fun for them, the world was full of various content. Once a few got rich (or at least well-to-do and famous) from it, it all went to hell. If you're blogging and worrying about "how will readers find me" you're doing it wrong, and are basically doomed to fail. You blog because you like to write, and readers will slowly accumulate over time. Comments and/or a small forum can work wonders, too, as long as you're protected from spam.
  - deivid 2y ago
    You could try Marginalia's small web / blogosphere modes at https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/
  - rectang 2y ago
    It was hard to get your blog discovered 15 years ago, too. Recall "blogrolls", where blogs would link to other blogs — networking to securing such links would be the analogue to making yourself visible on social media today. I wonder — in absolute terms, is the number of people you can reach smaller today? It's surely proportionally smaller because the internet is much bigger.
input_sh 2y ago
Even if you do your own thing and make something super cool, nobody's gonna stumble upon it randomly. You either have to spam it on social media or aim for high ranking in search results (while that's still somewhat of a possibility). So, even with your own little website, you're still completely at the mercy of big tech. I still highly recommend it though. Your social media account comes and goes, but your own little website will be there however long you want it to be, display whatever info about you you want it to display, and it can look however you want it to look.
- jmbwell 2y ago
  > Even if you do your own thing and make something super cool, nobody's gonna stumble upon it randomly. You either have to spam it on social media or aim for high ranking in search results (while that's still somewhat of a possibility). Seems like this might depend on the objective. Spamming social media and aiming for search rank might be necessary for ad revenue, self-promotion, or other conversions, whatever those might be. But it is not strictly necessary. Doing your own thing and making something cool can be 100% the end in itself. The issue I have leans the other way. I'm hesitant to self-publish anymore primarily because I don't want my work to get sucked up into the commercial machinery of the Big Tech Web. I have no interest and gain no benefit from feeding AI, scrapers, aggregators, or other "creators" who do surf around for other people's work they can mill into their own hash for their own purposes. I'd love it if I could somehow publish only for other end-user humans, but I don't see how I can do that without paradoxically engaging with some aspect of the commercial apparatus. It's like a Foucaultian nightmare. There's no way not to be part of the system. Rejecting it requires first embracing it. To wit: here I am on HN complaining about giving away my work for free
  - syoung666 2y ago
    Charge something like $.05 to get access. Will get rid of worries around feeding the AI, scrappers, and aggregators. Not sure how to limit the (human) plagiarism angle.
    - boromisp 2y ago
jessekv 2y ago
I've got a blog on my own domain, and I'd love to be able to write as well as you one day. So far I've mostly stuck to photos (⌒_⌒;).
- atsaloli 2y ago
  Ooh! I want to start publishing photos online. What do you use? I looked at your website but it doesn't seem familiar.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    I'm very old school. I still have a Flickr Pro subscription.
  - dv35z 2y ago
    If you ever come across it - I'd love to find the "MkDocs-Material of Photo Gallery". Structured folders of photos - run one command - a slick, static-HTML site is built. A feature where you could put full-size photos in there, and the tool would automatically generate web-friendly sizes... Keep an eye out (or share here if you know a good one!)
    - jessekv 2y ago
      That is sort of what I have now, a script using pillow and osxphotos to export my albums.
  - jessekv 2y ago
    It's just hugo with a custom theme. I run my script to export photo albums from iPhoto, then I add some discussion in markdown.
- jseliger 2y ago
  You can do it! https://writeofpassage.com/ https://writeofpassage.com/ In books about writing, I like: How Fiction Works Reading Like a Writer Writing With Style There are many others of course. Perhaps the most important part is finding an editor. (I wound up marrying one, which is not uncommon.) I've seen recs for Sasha Chapin: https://www.sashachapin.com/ https://www.sashachapin.com/

acedTrex 2y ago

The internet is still plenty open, people just prefer the path of least resistance

raytopia 2y ago
I think the biggest issue today is it's hard to find blogs and other tiny websites via search engine. You almost have to be on social media for people to find your website.
- z0r 2y ago
  Hacker news is how I find things worth reading these days. If this place didn't exist my internet consumption would be cut in half (at least).
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I have to admit, I have never really understood this need to be found and this focus on discoverability. Unless you are monetizing your audience, why does it matter whether 10, 1000 or 100,000 people read your blog? If I write something on the Internet, or release some open source program, or post a video, I’m not making any money off of views: I’m doing it for myself. So I don’t really ultimately care how many people read it or view it. I firmly believe the best content on the Internet is not necessarily the stuff optimized for search engines and audience-building. We shouldn’t really care about that.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    When people were blogging because it was fun for them, the world was full of various content. Once a few got rich (or at least well-to-do and famous) from it, it all went to hell. If you're blogging and worrying about "how will readers find me" you're doing it wrong, and are basically doomed to fail. You blog because you like to write, and readers will slowly accumulate over time. Comments and/or a small forum can work wonders, too, as long as you're protected from spam.
- deivid 2y ago
  You could try Marginalia's small web / blogosphere modes at https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/
- rectang 2y ago
  It was hard to get your blog discovered 15 years ago, too. Recall "blogrolls", where blogs would link to other blogs — networking to securing such links would be the analogue to making yourself visible on social media today. I wonder — in absolute terms, is the number of people you can reach smaller today? It's surely proportionally smaller because the internet is much bigger.

input_sh 2y ago

Even if you do your own thing and make something super cool, nobody's gonna stumble upon it randomly. You either have to spam it on social media or aim for high ranking in search results (while that's still somewhat of a possibility). So, even with your own little website, you're still completely at the mercy of big tech. I still highly recommend it though. Your social media account comes and goes, but your own little website will be there however long you want it to be, display whatever info about you you want it to display, and it can look however you want it to look.

jmbwell 2y ago
> Even if you do your own thing and make something super cool, nobody's gonna stumble upon it randomly. You either have to spam it on social media or aim for high ranking in search results (while that's still somewhat of a possibility). Seems like this might depend on the objective. Spamming social media and aiming for search rank might be necessary for ad revenue, self-promotion, or other conversions, whatever those might be. But it is not strictly necessary. Doing your own thing and making something cool can be 100% the end in itself. The issue I have leans the other way. I'm hesitant to self-publish anymore primarily because I don't want my work to get sucked up into the commercial machinery of the Big Tech Web. I have no interest and gain no benefit from feeding AI, scrapers, aggregators, or other "creators" who do surf around for other people's work they can mill into their own hash for their own purposes. I'd love it if I could somehow publish only for other end-user humans, but I don't see how I can do that without paradoxically engaging with some aspect of the commercial apparatus. It's like a Foucaultian nightmare. There's no way not to be part of the system. Rejecting it requires first embracing it. To wit: here I am on HN complaining about giving away my work for free
- syoung666 2y ago
  Charge something like $.05 to get access. Will get rid of worries around feeding the AI, scrappers, and aggregators. Not sure how to limit the (human) plagiarism angle.
  - boromisp 2y ago

jessekv 2y ago

I've got a blog on my own domain, and I'd love to be able to write as well as you one day. So far I've mostly stuck to photos (⌒_⌒;).

atsaloli 2y ago
Ooh! I want to start publishing photos online. What do you use? I looked at your website but it doesn't seem familiar.
- ghaff 2y ago
  I'm very old school. I still have a Flickr Pro subscription.
- dv35z 2y ago
  If you ever come across it - I'd love to find the "MkDocs-Material of Photo Gallery". Structured folders of photos - run one command - a slick, static-HTML site is built. A feature where you could put full-size photos in there, and the tool would automatically generate web-friendly sizes... Keep an eye out (or share here if you know a good one!)
  - jessekv 2y ago
    That is sort of what I have now, a script using pillow and osxphotos to export my albums.
- jessekv 2y ago
  It's just hugo with a custom theme. I run my script to export photo albums from iPhoto, then I add some discussion in markdown.
jseliger 2y ago
You can do it! https://writeofpassage.com/ https://writeofpassage.com/ In books about writing, I like: How Fiction Works Reading Like a Writer Writing With Style There are many others of course. Perhaps the most important part is finding an editor. (I wound up marrying one, which is not uncommon.) I've seen recs for Sasha Chapin: https://www.sashachapin.com/ https://www.sashachapin.com/