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Comment by jcadam | Hacker News Reader

I keep thinking of starting a blog under a false name. My current blog: https://jamesadam.me, is full of mostly vanilla tech articles, conveying nothing particularly unique in perspective nor noteworthy in content.

I have ideas for more "interesting" articles I'd like to write (still mostly about software development, my industry, etc), but I fear they would either cause offense (and we all know there is no greater sin) or at the very least be off-putting to potential employers. Thus, I keep thinking about adopting a 'pen' name and throwing up a second blog to serve as an outlet for some of the more insane ramblings I'd like to inflict on the world.

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I first did this years ago with a science blog under a nom de plume and ended up with a decent audience relative to no promotion (40-60k~ readers per article). It was pretty satisfying and I would highly recommend doing it. The only downside may have been that it deeply inflamed my generalist yearnings for multiple careers.

Any thoughts on how you ended up with that much readership?

Focused on a niche subject. Wrote with humor, brevity and (unearned) authority. Was strategic with visual and verbal tone: styled the blog to reference institutions like NYT, wrote with the voice of authors I respect and/or enjoyed.

Most important, I think, was writing for being pleasurable and nourishing to the reader rather than egoistically trying to impress with wit, domain knowledge, and, worst of all, personal anecdotes – the boring, herpetic poison that oozes from most blogs.

Like art, you're assembling a puzzle with no preordained point of completion. It didn't come easily but seemed clear when it was done.

Thank you.

Blogs had blogrolls ofc (some even had web-rings) but for the most parts: a bunch of years ago it was normal for people to link to freshly found blogs from their articles. That kind of flatery was often returned and repeated. The big search engines picked up and send in a good amount of traffic if your article covered the exact topic searched for and at one time you were even allowed to link your blog from the comments you posted on other blogs. While the later doesn't seem like much you would by nature comment on blogs in the areas you are interested in which strongly tends to matches the topic of your own blogs. This process scaled perfectly with how impressive your comment was. I ended up reading countless blogs because their author 1) knew their shit and 2) knew how to write. The [say] 40 k hits could be a huge % of regulars who kept coming back for more. Much more valuable than getting 40 single page view zombies out of google, visitors who may or may not have liked your shit. (Google eventually decided for them that they didn't)

I one time did a rather dull blog with tiny posts describing new blogs I found. (preferably using their own words) It wasn't a serious effort but got over 3 million hits. People didn't stick around but it was seriously cross pollinating readers between similar blogs. The other [proverbial] stay at home mum into baking cakes was just that much more interesting to the one.

I had amazing amounts of fun sending the "motherload" of traffic into 2 article blogs that started days ago. (If you knew me you would laugh how stereotypical that joke is.)

The proverbial mum was like, uhhh okay, I suppose I have to bake more cakes now?

Then when the blog matured other blogs would start to publish (much better) Articles about those awesome cakes. Even interviews happened.

I added 1-5 (usually 3) blog posts per day for a few years. Today there is ONLY ONE out of all of those blogs left that I know of. My blog died naturally, I just got bored with gazing over stale blogs and deleting postings referring to dead ones then deleted the entire thing.

I occasionally create random WordPress sites just to post stuff that's on my mind but which I don't want to openly admit.

Does it ever find an audience?

One of my friends' throw-away blog articles ended up being be be. one in a non-english search for "butt cramps". It has something like 1.2 million page views and 1000 comments.

Proctalgia fugax is apparently pretty common.

I never checked. I severely doubt it though.

If you've been around for long enough you'll notice a full circle.

This is how geocities used to be.

I tend to write my blog posts under my own name. Then tend to guest post on other peoples blogs under different names if I don't want something linked to me (I actually did that for a couple years).

Now, I'm at the - I really don't care if I cause some offense level. I don't want to blow anything too out of the water I guess. However, doing an actually analysis about how violence isn't caused or even made worse by guns isn't going to be too bad in my own name.

You're welcome to guest blog on some of my other blogs (if it's a related topic lol):

https://austingwalters.com/

Have one for my company related to NLP, Sentiment, etc:

https://blog.projectpiglet.com/

Finance (haven't used in a while):

http://topfinancialadvisor.org/

And some others I guess, DM me if interested.

Let us know of the visitors spike you'll get after this plug.

Will do.

Highly recommended. I have one.

Sounds interesting. Please let us know when you've started it. :)

I think that’s a good idea. :) I’ve considered doing the same thing, although I currently don’t even have a blog under my REAL name. It’s very easy to self-censor, especially if you’re not famous or powerful enough not to have to care.

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