

Show HN: My Technical Blogging book for hackers and founders is now in Beta - acangiano
http://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging

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acangiano
Hi guys,

my book is finally available in beta. About 200 out of 250 pages have been
completed, so the book is useful right now.

It covers pretty much anything you’d realistically need to know to run a
successful technical blog, whether you are a developer or a business guy. It
can even be useful to non-technical people, but I wrote it specifically with
hacker and founder types in mind.

Early reviewers have provided great feedback and some very encouraging praise.
After reading an early draft, Derek Sivers had this to say about the book:

"My career got a huge boost when I got serious about blogging, two years ago.
So I'm in absolute awe at this amazing book, going above and beyond the best
advice I've ever heard on the subject. I wish I would have read this two years
ago, as I had to learn this the hard way. Honestly, this book has got me
inspired to get back to writing more."

I honestly believe that this book can help many fellow HNers achieve their
goals, whether that goal is to further your career, promote your startup, or
simply generate some side income (mine varies between $2,000-$6,000 per
month).

If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them.

~~~
jgrahamc
That's quite a bit more than 'side income'. How many page views are you
getting? What ad systems etc.?

~~~
acangiano
I don't get a huge deal of pageviews (on average), but I squeeze every dollar
out of those I do get. Combining my handful of major blogs, I'd say about
100,000-200,000 per month.

In the book I explain in detail how I go about monetizing blogs and what
exactly I do to maximize each revenue stream. However, in short: Amazon
Associates, other affiliate offers, sponsorships, Ad Networks, AdSense. In
that order.

~~~
jgrahamc
Thank you. That's very useful and I will be getting a copy of the book. My
site (jgc.org) gets something like number of monthly page views, so it would
be very interesting to understand how I might increase my personal income!

~~~
acangiano
Awesome. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

~~~
dhimes
I just bought it. A couple of notes on the process (I haven't received it
yet): I paid with PayPal (yeah, I know, but I figured I would probably be the
only one in this crowd who would do that for you) and it was weird because
_after_ I paid I was asked for "billing information" (notably email address,
etc.). I was wondering if my payment had been registered.

Secondly, in my "profile", I elected to take advantage of your delivery to my
wi-fi Kindle. However, my email account for delivery is not @free.kindle.com,
but just @kindle.com

Will I get it?

EDIT: The download link landed in my spam box. Still haven't received the wifi
download. Not giving up on it just yet.

~~~
acangiano
Sorry to hear about your trouble, and thanks for buying my book. For delivery
issues, I would recommend you get in touch with PragProg's support here:
<http://pragprog.com/contact>

Please let me know if the Kindle issue isn't resolved.

~~~
dhimes
OK got it. You have to allow @pragprog.com to be one of your "allowed senders"
on your Amazon Kindle management website. @free.kindle.com is set up
automatically, so that wasn't the problem.

EDIT: BTW, hadn't heard from support when I found the fix.

~~~
acangiano
I'm glad it's sorted out.

------
typicalrunt
I have wanted to hone my writing skill, but I rarely have anything to write
about. It just doesn't come to the fore-front of my thoughts for me to sit
down and write a 200 or 1000 word blog post. I'm very technical and also a
generalist, so I feel like I _should_ have something to write, but the words
(or, maybe muse?) escape me.

Does your book talk about how to get over this roadblock?

~~~
acangiano
Absolutely. In particular, it's addressed in the following chapters:

* In Chapter 1 and 2 when you plan your blog, I help you decide on the kind of blog you want to run, including how to pick between a niche or more generalized blog. Next, you don't just pick a topic a random, but instead do an exercise that helps you figure out if you have enough interest in the topic and plenty of things to say on it. We also use a bunch of free tools to estimate the size of your potential audience, so you don't corner yourself into a niche that is too narrow (unless you intentionally want to do so).

* Chapter 5 gives you plenty of ideas on the kind of content you can create, how to get inspired, and what tends to work well for technical audiences (among other topics such as developing your own voice, writing catchy headlines that are not misleading, and so on).

* Chapter 6 is called "Producing Content Regularly" and it's also relevant to the issue you raise. In particular, when it comes to surviving writer's block and contending with the challenge of coming up with new posts regularly.

------
stankal
One of the issues I've been struggling with is dedicating the time for writing
a blog. An entrepreneurs we offer have to: code, test, manage other devs,
provide customer support, design features, market, manage business, etc.
Everytime I think about starting a blog, and I do think it's very valuable, I
am discouraged as I know that some of the other areas of the business will
likely suffer. Any advice or insight on now to add blogging to the todo list?

~~~
acangiano
I knew this would be a common issue, so I specifically wrote the book under
the assumption that busy professionals would read it. I also dedicated a
chapter to the issue of producing content on a regular basis.

Your question is covered amply within the book, but the gist of it is that you
need to take the following steps.

Step 1: Have the right mindset. Blogging is not optional for your business.
Inbound marketing is an extremely cost effective tool to help you promote your
business. To ignore it is to to leave money on the table - and potentially a
lot of it at that. Blogging, for your startup, is a marketing activity.

Step 2: Schedule it. Do you code just when you want? Do you answer support
emails whenever the mood strikes? No. So if blogging is a serious component of
your business, you need to schedule time for it. OK, you're busy, we all are,
but can you spare one or two hours a week? Set that time in your calendar.
That allocation is sufficient to publish at least one post per week.

Step 3: Write it. You just had a pop up appear from your online calendar that
says "Write a post titled 'How Coach to 5K changed my life'". Good. Now sit
down and start writing for an hour in order to complete the post. The more
frequently you do it, the faster you'll become. The book suggests several
techniques for focusing (including the Pomodoro Technique), and includes a
large list of suggestions for dealing with writer's block.

Step 4: Promote it. Use an hour, usually much less, which you booked ahead of
time, to promote your article. I dedicated Part 3 of the book to this topic.
Just follow the steps, it's all written down and ready for you to avail of.

Other parts of the book will guide you in terms of strategic decisions, and
the chapter 11 (which is in progress at the moment) is going to be solely
dedicated to aiding startups in promoting their own products.

Your concern is valid for sure, but I believe my book will squash it out and
put your mind at ease well before you finish reading it.

------
przemoc
Haven't started real techblogging yet, but I may one day, so PDF for future
reading has been already bought. I only skimmed it a bit and didn't find
answer to one problem that is bothering me.

What you think about self-promoting vs sharing overlapping issue when same
channels are used? Putting buttons allowing reader to link your text on
reddit, HN, etc. seems redundant and may even lead to duplicated entries
there, which is bad. So should these buttons link to entries author already
submitted herself/himself? (Twitter is out of question, as it has a bit
different distribution model.)

Advantages of direct linking to particular reddit/HN/etc. entries are pretty
obvious and I am somehow amazed not seeing this in the wild. Are there any
serious downsides of such solution? Question could be rephrased to: how often
old stuff is rediscovered (i.e. linked for the second or more time) on
reddit/HN? If it's extremely rare case, then common (at least nowadays)
sharing buttons are rather useless.

~~~
acangiano
In the beginning, before your site is established, promoting it yourself is
particularly important. Things change once your site becomes quite popular. At
that point the social/sharing buttons will help you get more votes for stories
you’ve submitted, and you'll see the occasional submission of older articles
by your visitors.

It's mostly a number game.

Even if your CTR (Click-Through Rate) for those buttons is very low, you'll
get several clicks if you receive thousands of visits. So they are generally
worth having.

Just be careful, as I caution in the book, too many buttons dilute your call
to action message and lead to a lower CTR.

~~~
przemoc
Maybe I didn't write it clearly enough, but you missed my point.

Sharing/social buttons are nowadays used for submitting stories. And if
resubmitting old stories by visitors is not happening often (+), then it's
pretty stupid. Why? If I'm already submitting my posts myself to social sites,
these buttons should point to already created there entries. Even by only
assuming that votes are the main concern in such sites, it's easy to tell that
having "splitted" entries instead of the main single one is purely wrong. But
crucial benefit here is social consolidation, so your visitors can easily
check reddit or HN comments, if there are any.

And I believe my idea is really good, yet I don't understand why people go
with mostly useless submitting buttons requiring additional work of the
precious visitors. I also don't believe I could be the first one with such
simple yet efficient solution.

(+) It's kind of the question here, I don't know whether there are any
statistics about it.

~~~
acangiano
> Why? If I'm already submitting my posts myself to social sites, these
> buttons should point to already created there entries.

Generally speaking, intelligent plugins/buttons already do that for you. If
the article hasn't been submitted already, they let you submit. If the article
was already submitted, they let you upvote.

------
mariusbutuc
_Disclaimer_ : Antonio is my colleague, so I had a chance to review most of it
in advance.

In my opinion, even if you consider that your blogging skills have passed
intermediate level, this book brings plenty of useful information, examples
and ideas to inspire your blogging effort. Only wish I have read it before
starting my own blogs.

------
dscape
Been looking forward for this book for a while. Exciting stuff. Thanks

------
skeptical
You can call me narrow-minded, but such books are based on the premise that
the blog juice is already there but it just needs to be squeezed the right
way. While I don't doubt that the knowledge exposed in this book is useful,
one should be aware that we're talking about a limited fringe of improvement
over the real value of a blog: it's content.

There are many ways to squeeze an orange, if you want to get yourself a fine
glass of juice, you're better of finding a good juicy orange instead of
learning the ultimate squeezing technique. Just my two cents.

~~~
acangiano
I understand your concern, but if you read the table of contents, you'll see
that this is a complete guide that starts from scratch. It certainly helps you
find "a good juicy orange", and discusses what kind of content you should
write and how to present it (before proceeding to promote, monetizing, etc,
it).

