

2012 Blogging Year in Review and 2013 Goals - dmor
http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/01/2012-blogging-year-in-review-2013-goals/

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Alex3917
Interesting. The problem with blogging (imho) as a medium is that it rewards
mediocrity. Spending 6-8 hours per post is probably the sweet spot in terms of
making it onto the front page of HN or whatever, and past 12 hours the
addition return on investment is minimal to non-existant. The best strategy
for getting followers therefor is to generally write well, but to minimize
time spent doing actual research and/or serious thought. It's kind of
frustrating, especially since RSS is basically dead so there isn't really any
endgame.

A lot of my blog posts are things I've spent 100+ hours working on, but at
that point it's basically just art with no practical business or reputational
value.

~~~
dmor
I agree, it is easy to spend way too much time on a post - as a rule I spend
no more than 3 hours on a post, and I kind of embrace mediocrity. At some
point (often way before hitting the full 3 hours), the value of publishing and
starting a conversation become greater than producing a perfect piece of
writing that may come from more time spent editing and refining the post
itself.

A lot of the posts I spent the least time on did the best on HN, and some of
the ones I labored over and loved the most linger in obscurity.

The best thing that happened because of my blog this year, at least external
of my own personal happiness at self-expression, was a woman approaching me at
a conference who read my most popular post, quit her job, and started a
company. It's hard to explain why that's so valuable a feeling, because she
was probably nearly ready to make that decision and my post just came at the
right time, but it gives me a sense of connectedness with other people that I
think a lot of Internet citizens are missing. Mediocre writing, first rate
conversations and happiness.

I hope in 2013 you'll lower the bar on the writing and publish more, you might
really enjoy it.

~~~
Alex3917
"I hope in 2013 you'll lower the bar on the writing and publish more, you
might really enjoy it."

I have one more long post I'm determined to finish if it kills me. It's
already 30,000+ words, so granted it's arguably not even a blog post anymore.
But yeah, I'm basically cataloging all the infrastructure problems in the US.
So I'm taking all the different issues you see people bring up all the time in
various articles, linking every single fact to a primary source, and
aggregating all those in one place. And then writing some analysis on top.

After that I'll go back to writing shorter stuff though.

