
Does anyone read blogs? - bkovitz
Friends say I should start a blog.  I like to write, and I have lots of wide-ranging interests and ideas.  So why not post some of that to the web and maybe make some money?<p>I find myself drawing a blank about what I'd blog about, though.  Who would I write for?  What would be their purpose in reading?<p>I seldom read blogs.  I find them boring.  With one exception, I don't see why anyone would read them.  Seriously, does anyone except your spouse and closest friends care what random thought crossed your mind today?<p>The exception is blogs about fast-moving domains, written by people who themselves follow the domain closely.  Following the blog would be of interest to others who want to keep up with that domain.  Indeed, my understanding is that the most popular blogs are about gossip, politics, and specific industries.  This is what we used to call "journalism".  Similarly, a kind of blog that I can see the value of is a blog about some skill, like "lifestyle design" or getting straight A's in school.  Not "any random thought", but "the latest about a specific topic from a very good source".<p>I hate to shoot down an idea without even trying it.  Without a purpose for writing, though, I don't see how to even try writing a blog.  Any suggestions?
======
johngunderman
Don't blog about your life, blog about what you've learned. I blog about
interesting code and languages that I come across. I like writing how-tos on
my blog because often I will later use my own how-to to do something I had
forgotten down the line. It's all a matter of personal preference, but blog
about something that you find interesting.

~~~
bkovitz
I like this: "blog about what you've learned". That would capture just-learned
things every day, while they're fresh, and thus serve a useful purpose for me
--and therefore provide a good anchor for social connection through the
blogosphere.

~~~
kalid
Seconded. I started blogging at betterexplained.com to tutor myself; I wanted
to store just the 'aha moment' that made a concept click.

Writing helps you remember ideas and discover new ones in the process.

------
DanielBMarkham
Never blog for other people.

If you want to write commercial content, do so. Find a tight niche, call it a
blog (it's really a serial newsletter but let's not quibble) and saturate it.
This -- I think -- was what I had in mind when I started blogging.

But it sucks. Look, if you can blather on about the same topic for 3 years God
love you. I can't. I like all sorts of things. I like writing about them. The
fifth time I write a story on debugging I'm through with debugging for a
while.

So I decided to continue blogging because I like writing. Hell with everyone
else, including friends and family. I'm not writing to be cute or
narcissistic. If anything, I'm blogging to a) help sort out my thoughts by
writing them down, and b) leave something behind of myself for my great-
grandkids besides a bunch of computer code somewhere. I can't email the little
buggers, but I can leave some essays and bits of trivia.

So blog if you like writing. Blog commercially if you like that sorta thing,
but no matter what you do, focus inwardly instead of externally. It shouldn't
matter whether you have 10 readers or 10 thousand.

~~~
bkovitz
I like the idea of writing to sort out my thoughts. I've been doing this for
years in email with a couple friends. We've sent about 15,000 emails back and
forth so far. Writing those brainstorming emails happens naturally because I
know who I'm writing for. I know what they care about and how they think, and
I see ways to move their minds in ways they'd find enjoyable.

What I mean by "a purpose" is to affect an audience somehow. I don't normally
write "for myself". Writing, at least the way I experience it, is translation:
here's how the reader currently understands things, here's some content, now
invent a way to make that content comprehensible in terms of that way of
understanding. Of course, doing this translation leads to improved insight
into the subject matter, just as writing a program leads to improved insight
into the problem domain.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'm currently doing a "Does God Exist?" series of posts because, well, the
argument interests me. So I took a bunch of books on all sides of the issue
and am going through each of them, writing a quick review as I complete each
book (along with a recap)

I've found that the act of making yourself physically write something on paper
makes you remember better. This effect is amplified if you're trying to
explain it to somebody else in an essay. So the blog is kind of a mind "power
tool", enabling me to sort through tons of debate and get to the few arguments
and insights that matter to me. On top of that, it'll be around next year when
I've forgotten a lot of the detail, keeping the "good parts" near the top of
my cognitive heap. (not stack)

------
anatoly
I write a blog that's precisely of the sort that you think can't be
interesting to others. Random thoughts about anything that interests me;
rants, arguments, (rarely) mini-essays on anything in a long list of my
interests. Very eclectic.

It's extremely popular, with readership in five figures, and typically more
than a hundred daily comments on various posts. One of the best things about
it is that it has many readers who are smarter than me, and/or more
knowledgeable than me on just about any given topic I'm interested in. I've
made a few really good friends and a lot of friendly acquaintances through the
blog, all over the world.

Maybe my case is a rare exception; that wouldn't surprise me. I've tried, for
example, to write the same kind of eclectic random-thoughts blog in English --
my primary blog is in Russian -- for a few years, and never got more than
100-200 readers. Maybe I wasn't giving it enough attention (it's semi-dormant
now, though I'm trying to find tuits to revive it), or maybe in English, a
non-specialized blog has a harder time attracting attention. Or maybe much of
it is random. Among the blogs I read (40+ in English, a few hundreds in
Russian), most widely-read ones are either by famous people or specialized to
some topic; but there are some exceptions like me.

~~~
bkovitz
What's the URL of your blog? A friend of mine can translate. I'd like to see
how you make this work.

~~~
anatoly
avva.livejournal.com

------
caffeine
Have you checked out PG's site? Rather than a blog, it's an (occasionally)
updated set of essays and thoughts. They are usually reviewed by several
people before publication (so are higher quality than blog posts), and most of
them have a specific point or question which is explored in some detail.

Benefits to this approach are the lack of a dated timeline of posts (so no
urge to write because "it's been a week already"), and you only write when a
particular issue strikes your fancy.

A negative of this approach (for PG this is less of an issue) is that it is
difficult to gain a readership this way, as there is no regular "feed" of
content coming from you. If anything is true about online readers, it's that
they like to be fed.

~~~
bkovitz
Is it really true that online readers like to be fed? Do many people actually
follow blogs, or do most blogs get read only when an article comes up in
search-engine results? Is there any data on this?

BTW, I do indeed like the "occasional essay" approach--and especially having
some reviewing and filtering. The #1 problem of the web these days (any
entrepreneurs reading?) is signal-to-noise ratio.

~~~
akkartik
"Do many people follow blogs?"

Feedburner stats indicate that blogs do have followers. But do they get
_read_? I suspect the number of readers is far lower than subscriber count.

In particular, I think nobody reads tweets, no matter how many followers you
think you have. Twitter is mainstream perhaps in that many people write. The
only people who read are PR people scanning for a few keywords at a time.

I've been thinking about this for a while:
<http://akkartik.name/blog/2009-05-19-21-30-46-soc>

------
kirubakaran
<http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/you-should-write-blogs>

[It is also a good example in support of at least one of the points that it
itself makes]

------
frossie
_"Friends say I should start a blog"_

This is not a good reason to start a blog :-)

I read just under 20 blogs (by which I mean real people's blogs, not tech news
that just happen to use the blog platform to publish).

The best blogs are defined by a very strong focus on a particular topic. This
both because it gives the writer the opportunity to explore themes at lengths,
and it gives the reader a certain amount of predictability in what they are
going to find.

Narrow-focus blogging also has the advantages of allowing you to build a more
diverse audience. This may sound counter-intuitive at first, but the more
subjects you touch the more you end up narrowing your audience to people who
think like you.

I think your instincts are correct. "Random thought" blogs are not going to
have a wider audience than your friends and family.

~~~
ErrantX
> This is not a good reason to start a blog :-)

I dont know - we dont really have enough data about his friends and why they
think this.

It could be good advice. For example if I was considered expert and insightful
on, say, a security forum my friends there might suggest I start to put some
of it in a blog for a wider audience :)

To the OP: It really depends how good a writer you are and what sort of topics
you can write about. If your engaging to read then your audience might range
across a number of sources.

Yes, people do generally read a small set of core blogs - but we also sit and
read interesting stuff that goes by our radar. You might not get people
checking your site every day but if they can find good content on there once
or twice a fortnight (say) they might look out for your links on HN et all.
That, to me, is as good a readership as any :)

(if you in it to make money though that's a different matter)

------
PStamatiou
"I find myself drawing a blank about what I'd blog about, though. Who would I
write for? What would be their purpose in reading?"

I hate to self-promote like this, but seeing as how I run a startup (in
profile) dedicated to helping bloggers find stuff to write about and "cure
writer's block" (our little slogan), I figure I should say something.

Yes, you should definitely, definitely start a blog. If you're comfortable
with it, I'd say get firstnamelastname.com. I got paulstamatiou.com four years
ago and have been writing on it consistently since then and I kept it
professional and devoid of too many personal things. I talked about stuff that
interested me (technology) and often lots of little guides showing how I was
able to do this or that. A lot of my posts have just been about things I've
been working with over the last few days. New piece of software that I find
really handy.. blog post, but I try to add info that others wouldnt have..
tips on how to use that, or getting it setup quickly etc.

Over the years my subscriber numbers slowly went up and now I have a decent
following. It's still more or less "professional" in terms of the content I
put up there and it has ended up being a portfolio of sorts for myself. Was it
worth it? DEFINITELY. It got me a Yahoo internship in California (and several
other job offers), I've been flown around to check out various events for
different companies, got invited to speak at a conference in Europe (and
expenses paid), and I was even in a Nike commercial as they found me online as
a "real" user of Nike Plus. Again, I dont want to make this like I'm tooting
my own horn... just trying to say that you need to start a blog!

only reason why you might not want to start a blog:

*you dont think you would be able to write consistently

The only thing worse than not having a blog IMO is having one that hasn't been
updated in weeks or months.

I could go on and on but I'll just point you to my HN profile where you can
email me. :-)

~~~
sielskr
_The only thing worse than not having a blog IMO is having one that hasn't
been updated in weeks or months._

Can you explain why an infrequently updated blog would be bad?

I suppose you believe that it makes you look bad somehow. But what evidence do
you have that that is really so?

------
lhorie
There are many types of blogs: the family-oriented types, the 5-stories-per-
day magazine-style types, niche review/guide types, "semi-anonymous" technical
opinion/discussion types, etc.

Some styles of blogging are more suited for money making, but obviously take a
lot more effort (especially so when you are competing for eyeballs against
established full-time blogger teams).

Techies and geeks often tend to use blogging as a form of intellectual
expression, about their opinions on their field of interest, or to talk about
things they've done or are working on. This type of blogging is often reactive
to others' opinions, news from major outlets and aggregators, etc, and often
become decentralized conversations.

Family-oriented blogging usually takes the form of show-and-tell when they're
going through something exciting in life and blogging can be a nice complement
to their IRL social lifes.

In the end, blogging is what you make out of it. It's not a magic pot of gold
and can look like anything between an old-school Geocities guestbook and a
professionally written magazine.

If you want to do it for fun and/or for expressing yourself, just go ahead and
do it. Who cares if no one is reading (yet)? But, if you want to do it for
money, then treat it as a step into a journalism career, not as a retirement
fund.

------
jseliger
I read a number of blogs. The best ones focus on specific niches but often use
those niches to explore the wider world. For example, Marginal Revolution at
<http://www.marginal> revolution.com is nominally an economics blog, but it
also discusses foreign travel, ethnic cuisine, books, and more. The blogs I
contribute to try to follow the same general principle: The Story's Story at
<http://jseliger.com> focuses on books (except for the present top post, which
is about keyboards—sometimes exceptions are interesting) and Grant Writing
Confidential at <http://blog.seliger.com> . The latter is part of my family's
business and so has a purpose beyond random musings.

If you're thinking about writing a blog, read Penelope Trunk's comments:
<http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/penelopes-guide-to-blogging/> which are
invaluable if not always accurate. In addition, I wrote a post called "You’re
Not Going to be a Professional Blogger, Regardless of What the Wall Street
Journal Tells You" that got slashdotted and ought to dissuade you from the
idea you're going to make money directly at it:
[http://blog.seliger.com/2009/06/17/youre-not-going-to-be-
a-p...](http://blog.seliger.com/2009/06/17/youre-not-going-to-be-a-pro/) .

"Without a purpose for writing, though, I don't see how to even try writing a
blog. Any suggestions?"

As others have said, don't write a blog if you don't have a purpose. Your
purpose should come from something you care about deeply enough to know
something about that you'd like to transmit to others: in my case, that means
books, chiefly, but also grant writing. For many HN readers, it probably means
programming. Remember too that the deep knowledge/writing/transmission process
isn't linear, but recursive: I've probably learned more about books by trying
to sort my ideas about them out in a logical, rational way than I would if I
just read a lot (this, incidentally, is why good schools require you to write
a lot: writing forces you to embellish the ideas you do have and often to come
up with ideas you didn't have previously).

------
code_devil
Yep, I had a similar problems when deciding to write a blog. First of all
personal stuff may not be important/interesting to others OR maybe you may not
feel comfortable putting too much personal details. I wrote a couple but
always shut them down soon. Finally I started <http://socialapp.wordpress.com>

I have been going to a lot of meetups in the Social Space (Facebook, Myspace,
Web Startup's etc) as my side projects/interests lie in the same area. In the
process of these meetup's I have learnt a lot and seen a couple of good demos.
So, I started to blog about those events or the demos that I see there for
everyone else's. After any meetup, I typically have a descent number of topics
to write about.

The primary reason for me to start a blog was to get better in writing skills
and convert the thought process to text that fellow reader can comprehend. I
am not really looking to make any money via blogging at least in the near
future.

Another theme I have seen is that a couple of people write on funny incidents
that happened to them during the day or weekend. It could be a
funny/embarrassing incident, but they do a great job of expressing it that
even strangers will find it amusing to read it.

Edit: In the process I also opened a twitter account (@socialapp) to see if I
would be able to promote my blog. It's been a descent passive experiment as
well =)

------
jpirkola
I started to blog mostly for myself (Dec 2008), and initially that was the
audience. After a while I started to find my focus areas and now I have
changed the name of the blog twice - and become a tech source magazine like
publication with a bunch of writers and hundreds of readers (maxping.org).
Money? No, at least not yet - unless $60 from google adsense counts. I
recommend to just start doing it and find out how it folds out.

------
samlittlewood
I think you just wrote your first entry.

------
jff
Remember to use the word "Random" in the title, then everyone will know not to
read it :(

~~~
bkovitz
That is the truth. The word "random" in a blog title says, "I have no purpose
here other than to be a windbag." At least it's honest.

~~~
jff
Or, "This blog will get 10 posts before halting forever."

------
mdoar
I subscribe to _many_ blogs that cover my technical interests and a few
personal ones. I avoid blogs with adverts or that are set up to make money. I
generally use an RSS reader to follow these blogs (and Twitter and other
sources).

------
deimos
Then start writing/blogging anything that interests you. Over time, you'll get
the groove on and start forming topics that may pull in readers.

------
CyberFonic
Start a blog on a subscription basis. Your friends can pay up their
subscription and if you hit some threshold, then you start it. The old ... let
them put their money on the table gambit. Other than that, I agree with the
other comments. Blogging is something that you should do if you're prepared to
do it with no reward.

