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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

I have blogged for the last four years. Apparently some of what I wrote was interesting enough that people remember my name. Some of them have large amounts of other people's money to spend on outside consultants. This is a fortuitous and totally unplanned coincidence.

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I love it when this happens. I've had a similar experience with blogging and owe everything to it. It moved me from Nebraska to California, has won me big clients, and even provides significant passive revenue.

Can you tell us more?

Well, when I lived in Nebraska, there was a startup that discovered me (one of the founders met a guy from the company where I worked at a restaurant). I had them as a client and then they hired me and moved me. Having the blog with online portfolio really helped - not to mention that I learned the technology side of web design from managing my blog.

When I was tired of CA, I moved to Chicago. I still love the Silicon Valley way of business though. Someone working at oDesk found me through a blog post around that time and then I started working with them as a client - remotely. They've been a great client, and having them didn't hurt in winning new clients.

I have the top hit on Google for "lump in mouth." The page gets about 25k hits a month, plus spun off into a forum, http://lumpinmouth.com I make some okay ad revenue from that.

I also have one of the top hits for "transfer itunes" from a blog post I wrote about a method for transferring songs, ratings, playlists from one computer to another. That also gets a lot of traffic, and I sell affiliate iPod utilities through a separate site I created. Additionally, I have been able to sign up direct advertisers.

Its funny when I think back to all of my friends who were confused when I started blogging "are you getting paid for it? Why are you doing this?" (you have to understand the Nebraska mentality) They couldn't understand doing something for pure enjoyment. Of course, I did end up getting paid.

What area in Nebraska? I live in Hastings :(

Omaha, so a different world from Hastings, really

Yes defiantly different.

First off, Hey kadavy, its been a while, when you coming by Omaha again? :)

Mike, I'm in Omaha now. You should come check out our scene sometime. Feel free to email me at matt@nimblelogic.com

Hey Matt! Good to see you. I'll be heading to Omaha as soon as I get a good reason to. No family there anymore :(

Damn. Never got you here for BarCamp. Maybe BigOmaha next year?

Is it more profitable to work for people instead of continuing to build products? What do they hire you for - SEO expertise or programming ability?

And how much of your name-recognition is due to your blog, and how much is due to how much you comment on social websites like this? It seems to me your comment output far exceeds your blog output.

Is it more profitable to work for people instead of continuing to build products?

I would do fairly decently for myself if I did consulting full time, or at any appreciable fraction of full time, but that isn't where I want to be in my life.

What do they hire you for - SEO expertise or programming ability?

Most frequently, to do my "how you can use engineering to market software" shtick. Sometimes that involves SEO, sometimes it involves me programming, sometimes it involves me being a human being who is capable of talking to engineers and marketers without either side being unduly offended. 90% of programmers think they're in the top 10% of the profession -- I have no such illusions, so I typically tell folks that using me to program is probably not the most efficient use of their dollars.

As to the last question, I don't know. My professional life is sort of a package deal. Some portion of it is BCC, some portion blogging, some portion knowing people from around, etc.

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