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Comment by scarface_74 | Hacker News Reader

I would go even further. Trying to develop a “brand” that stands above the noise isn’t worth it.

That’s not saying writing isn’t important. I don’t think I understand a subject unless I can teach it, explain it and argue both sides about why you should and shouldn’t use it.

If I were going to go into independent consulting as oppose to working for consulting companies, I might start a blog a year ahead of time. But it wouldn’t be for discovery. Leveraging and improving my network would be the first strategy and then direct people to it once they knew me.

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> I don’t think I understand a subject unless I can teach it, explain it and argue both sides about why you should and shouldn’t use it.

this is 100% why I write "courses" alongside my notes when learning something- forces you to think about pitfalls you fall into while learning, things you need to revisit and an overall story on how to introduce a topic.

but blogging? Outside of an immediate personal sphere I don't really see the need. Although that said I'm looking at things like [pico.sh](https://pico.sh/prose) just to play around with presentable notes/courses rather than my default obsidian stuff.

I would think if you aren't trying to develop a brand then you may as well just make the blog private.

I love keeping a blog as my own private journal. I wouldn't want it public though because I can keep it as unstructured/messy as I want with it being private. Mostly a collection or random notes / thoughts / code that I wouldn't want a potential employer to get an impression of me from.

It has huge value to me. The value of reading someone else blog at this point is basically zero to me. Mostly throw away, surface level articles for branding and networking purposes but if that is the dance you are trying to learn then it makes sense.

I don’t have a blog for anything professional. But I do have a blog that is a public personal journal of our frequent travel, including on an off “digital nomadding”.

I don’t have ads, affiliate links nor do I care about traffic or have any analytics. I doubt that it gets any real traffic. By keeping it public, the only benefit I see is that it encourages me to at least care about my writing. It’s just my spot on the internet.

https://digitalnomadder.micro.blog/

There are thousands of blogs. You need something memorable to keep people coming back. That is what branding is to some extent. It's not just about slogans or logos.

Even if you do have something memorable, how would you be found through organic search and even then why would most people remember to check it off unless they follow you on social media - which will probably be suppressed if you have a link to your blog - or they use RSS, which few people do these days unfortunately.

You almost have to have a mailing list, which is problematic on its own.

Then, what’s the ultimate goal? Ads (ughh)? Paid subscriptions? Becoming known as an industry expert?

I’ve found that getting traffic through organic search isn’t that difficult, if you have a post which is quite specific. For example, some years ago I wrote down how to upload assets to an already existing GitHub Release [1] as a small note to myself, so that I remember it next time. That is one of my best performing posts, majority of traffic via search engines, and I didn’t advertise it anywhere.

It by no means gets thousands of views per day, more like single digits, but people keep finding it, which gives me hope it’s been useful for others as well.

[1] https://blog.br4.no/github-actions-release/

I am a minority in the sense that I exited social media a decade ago (yey!) but I am a heavy interweb user. I merely bookmark what I like and just re-visit often. Paul Graham's blog/essays and The Minimalists essays are two favorite spots that I return frequently, especially on commutes or late night and feel that something is missing from life (yes some more reading!!)

I know I am a rare beast with rare habits but a Firefox Bookmark/Favorite is my friend.

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