
Ten years of professional blogging – what I’ve learned - hispanic
http://andrewchen.co/professional-blogging/
======
chamoda
I've found that writing a blog post is one of the best ways to learn something
deeply. So I write stuff, not for marketing but own my personal development.
Of course marketing is nice sub result, but I never focus too much on title
like the OP.

My process looks like folowing

\- Choose the subject (usually a very small topic or algorithm)

\- Study it deeply for at least a weak, sometime months.

\- Start writing the post, learning is still happening.

\- Finish the post. At that point I usually have a very good understanding of
the topic.

Never think that you can't write about a subject because you are not an
expert. You may not be an expert but there are more people who know less than
you and they will find the post worthwhile.

[https://blog.chamoda.com](https://blog.chamoda.com)

~~~
jclos
I have found the same thing while teaching during my PhD. Most of my student
peers despised it and couldn't understand that I wasn't volunteering to teach
to help the university, I did it for the very selfish reason of helping myself
cement basic undergrad knowledge.

------
robteix
Good read. I used to blog very regularly years ago, but since the end of
Google Reader and the growing popularity of Facebook and Twitter, I’ve been
blogging less and less. Always wanted to pick it up again.

Anyway, this caught my attention:

> Since starting a normal job (haha) it’s gotten harder to write on Sunday
> evenings, since that’s when the work email starts

Don’t do this to yourself.

------
nickjj
I've been blogging for about 2 years (120ish articles posted) and a lot of
what he says makes sense.

Especially finding your voice. I still don't feel like I've figured that one
out. My problem is I started blogging after working as a developer for 20
years so I want to talk about a billion different topics.

But the quickest way to become successful in this field is to write a ton
about 1 specific thing and then suddenly you're "that guy" about the topic
you're writing about.

------
rayalez
A few counterpoints on benefits of using Medium over of your own blog:

\- Submitting your articles to publications is a very easy way to get a lot of
free exposure. For example, my most successful post [1] generated 36k views
and 1.5k medium subscribers in the first couple of weeks just by being
accepted to HackerNoon.

\- Collecting email addresses is extremely easy. Design a pretty CTA image
that links to your email sign up form. Bonus points if you'll create a free
guide or some other giveaway. This makes Medium about 95-99% as effective at
building an audience on a custom blog. The post mentioned above generated
about 200 email signups over time, which is pretty good for free exposure I
wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

\- If you're interested in growing your own publication, you can easily
request good stories written by other authors(one click on a menu under each
post). That gives you free content and audience, if you want.

\- For me personally, Medium's editor _significantly_ lowers the barrier of
entry. Something about the well designed WYSIWYG format takes away the
pressure and makes writing more engaging. Besides it's easier to publish
short-form content. Many of my posts start out as tweets that ended up being
too long, or as HN/Reddit comments I'd like to share in a better format.
100-200 word Seth-Godin-style posts are easy to write regularly and medium's
format encourages you to do that.

\- You can always export your posts from medium into your personal blog.
That's what I do for mine[2]. Write on medium to gain free audience and
exposure, repost to your website, then promote posts from your site on
twitter/reddit, thus still keeping all the benefits. You can even cherry pick
your best articles - use medium to generate a ton of posts without any
pressure to be good, and publish the ones you're most proud of on your site.

[1] [https://hackernoon.com/full-stack-web-development-the-
comple...](https://hackernoon.com/full-stack-web-development-the-complete-
roadmap-9fe43ec0ba32)

[2] [https://startuplab.io/blog](https://startuplab.io/blog)

~~~
forgotpassagan
Medium in it's purest form is a blatant SEO siphon from your website. Well
written articles will generally place highly on Google's search results no
matter the domain(unless you've got shady shit going on). God knows what
metrics they're using these days (mostly ML?) But Google readily recognizes
articles well written from expert sources in my opinion. I've only written
around ten blog posts but they're all first page, some first result, for my
goal keywords.

And this is on a no-name website not optimized for SEO at all. The SEO arms
race has been going on so long that we've reached a point where, if you're a
good writer, it's easier to follow Google's guidelines than try to cheat the
system.

Medium and other blog sites are basically a guest blog, except you're not
getting paid for placement. Google ranking is everything and posting on medium
does nothing but hurt you gravely

~~~
fphilipe
> Well written articles will generally place highly on Google's search results
> no matter the domain(unless you've got shady shit going on).

Absolutely. I've written two blog posts on PostgreSQL on topics that, in my
opinion, weren't well covered and often misunderstood by its users. Both posts
show up on the first page on a google search for "psql cli" and "postgres
timezone".

I honestly never understood this whole fuss about SEO. In my opinion SEO is
about good content. Good content over time will spread, which will result in a
higher ranking.

~~~
forgotpassagan
Google heavy promotes articles that use their Google Analytics and have high
time-on-page scores. Everything Google does with search ranking is gameable
but built to focus on high quality content. The best thing about having a
couple high ranking pages is that it becomes much easier to make others. Your
trust score is already high so there's a good chance other articles about
postgres will also reach first page, even if they're not about specialized
topics. This is what the SEOtards fail to understand

------
personlurking
Somewhat relevant is a question I asked here several months ago. There were
181 comments, so there's enough to be able to extract some knowledge from
them.

Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13966190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13966190)

------
mooreds
I've been blogging for 14 years. The hardest thing for me is to dive deep into
a particular topic. My blog reflects what interests me at a given time, and
that can vary wildly.

This keeps the blog interesting to me, but means that the vast majority of my
traffic is search engine based, rather than folks who are coming to my blog to
find out what Dan thinks.

It's a tradeoff I'm willing to make, and have even blogged about:
[http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2188](http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2188)

~~~
qznc
Sounds like me. You seem to blog more consistently though. I can see a blog
post a day the last days.

My blog has month-long gaps. I have accepted that. It has a few popular pages
which produce occasional spikes. Mostly, it is a long-form storage of my
opinions, where I can refer people to.

[http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/blog_en.html](http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/blog_en.html)

~~~
mooreds
I actually try to blog once a month, but this Dec I challenged myself to blog
every week day:
[http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2495](http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2495)
(and have been actually finding the time to do it on the weekends).

Love the idea of "long form storage of opinions". I actually think everyone
should blog. If you can write a email, you can blog. Writing clarifies the
thoughts, IMHO.

------
1undo
> Titles are 80% of the work

If you writing fluff sure, but if your writing great content the title is less
important. Good work sells itself. 90% content 10% title just my 0.02.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Badly titled articles with excellent content can get rapidly flagged to death
on HN.

------
tootie
I'm curious about the point of running your own blog instead of hosting on
Medium et al. I get that you want to avoid being locked in to a platform that
could belly up, but isn't there a big benefit in network effect? Is he just
counting on external channels like Twitter to promote his site?

~~~
jerf
This person has been blogging for 10 years. How long has Medium been around?
How long will they continue to blog? How long will Medium continue to be
around?

My blog is quiescent right now (I discovered I'm an essayist rather than a
"blogger"), but it goes back to 2000, albeit quite messily from the first
platform conversion I did. No platform has been around that long. Goodness
knows the platform where it started is long gone and forgotten by almost
everyone.

~~~
user5994461
Wordpress has been around for quite a while.

------
netman21
Surprised at how poorly written this is. Typos all over. I would hope that
someone who considers himself a writer would take care to write well.

~~~
1undo
He only spends 20% on the actual writing, and 80% on the title. So out of an
hour only 12 minutes of writing and 48 minutes of working on title. That may
explain the typos

~~~
wyclif
So he spends 20% time on writing, but can't run spellcheck?

~~~
amigoingtodie
The title had no spelling errors.

~~~
wyclif
But the body text has quite a few.

------
henrik_w
Not blogging professionally, only for "personal use", but recently wrote up my
experience of blogging for 6 years:
[https://henrikwarne.com/2017/11/26/6-years-of-thoughts-on-
pr...](https://henrikwarne.com/2017/11/26/6-years-of-thoughts-on-programming/)

------
ppeetteerr
"Titles are 80% of the work" That's called click-bait.

If you want good advice, follow Jeff Atwood's post on the subject:
[https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-achieve-ultimate-
blog-s...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-achieve-ultimate-blog-success-
in-one-easy-step/)

~~~
tootie
It's only click-bait if the headline is a lie. A great headline for great
content is a win-win.

~~~
guelo
Click-bait doesn't have to be a lie. Stuff like "... will make your jaw drop!"
or "... what happened next blew my mind!" aren't really lies.

------
DigitalJack
I'm happy he wrote this, and I'll read it again at home tonight.

But what's the deal with "write the title last" and his examples all start
with the title?

~~~
DoreenMichele
I don't really understand your point. This is what he means:

 _I often write a placeholder title, write the essay, and then at the very
end, spend a good chunk of time iterating on titles until there’s a good one._

It isn't uncommon for me to handle blog posts that way as well, or even paid
freelance articles if no title was provided. You put in a title that suggests
what you are talking about, then you write the piece, then you try to figure
out what the most important detail is or the most compelling hook or the
shortest way to make the essential point.

Writing good titles is quite hard and good titles often grow out of the piece
after it is written. You get to the end and you have written multiple
paragraphs to give a good lead up and then your final paragraph draws a
conclusion in a way you didn't have in mind when you started. And therein lies
clues to a good title.

I fairly often pull ideas for a title from the last paragraph or two of a blog
post. And I usually don't know what that last paragraph will be until I have
written the entire piece.

~~~
DigitalJack
I must have missed that. Thanks for pointing it out, I was bothered by the
seemingly contradictory advice :)

all I noticed was:

    
    
      >"Titles are 80% of the work, but you
      write it as the very last thing. 
      It has to be an compelling opinion 
      or important learning"
    

followed by

    
    
      >"Most of my writing comes from
      talking/reading deciding I strongly
      agree or disagree. These opinions
      become titles. Titles become essays."
    

and then the example

    
    
      >"The best example of this in
      my work is 'Growth Hacker is the
      new VP Marketing' which started
      out as a tweet with 20+ shares, and
      then was developed into an essay
      afterwards."

------
EGreg
How to achieve money blogging in three easy steps:

1\. Attract people with titles like this one

2\. Make your blog popular (???)

3\. Put advertising

Thanks for reading this post!

PS: How I made $100,000 a day with one weird trick

(Long sales copy follows)

"I used to not make money and now I made $20K! This system is great!"

(Keep

Scrolling)

If you act now it will be only $10!! And we chare you $300 a month later.

PPS: Does anyone know why they always use the word _weird_ trick? The author
comes across as super unbiased that way? LOL

~~~
fermuch
Step 3 should go before step 2, or else you'll lose most of the profit.

------
flaviuspopan
I appreciate you taking the time to summarize all this; I've only begun
writing in earnest this past year and I'm glad to know that the habits I'm
working on developing now are sustainable for the long term.

------
Kagerjay
My biggest issue with blogging is that my writing isn't that great, and that
while I'd rather write on a wordpress platform, medium is just easier to write
with (WYISWYG). Or even posting on a discourse forum is easier. That, and
blogging is technically not productive so I can never find a happy mix between
the 2.

------
bbno4
I often find that writing blogposts is essential to help my learn. I find that
understanding formuale and understanding how things work is often better for
my academic learning than memorising formulae

[https://medium.com/@brandonskerritt51](https://medium.com/@brandonskerritt51)

------
hkon
Interesting. I wonder what opportunities blogging has given him.

~~~
matt_s
This is also a question I have. I'll often find comments everywhere that when
applying for tech jobs, having a relevant blog is of little value, hardly
looked at.

If the goal of your blog is purely to establish yourself as some authority on
topic(s), do you then have to build audience numbers like he has? Is it common
for a lot of people doing this to also do talks at conferences, etc?

If your goal is to monetize the blog, then I think his points matter. Titles
matter, attracting readers matter, establishing an email list matters. However
if you just want to share opinions and ideas or work you did I don't think a
lot of his points matter.

~~~
hkon
yes I have seen some who have progressed into publishing books based around
some particular interesting topics they wrote about on their blog. But I am
curious to know if some less obvious benefits come from blogging. I could
imagine that you could get more of the spontaneous oportunities from speaking
at conferences because of the in-person interaction after/during your session.
But from blogging, the long tail might be what is really valuable. Blogging
for ten years for instance, at least you have ten years of stuff online to
your name. Has to be worth something.

------
IamNotAtWork
Funny I never heard of him until today.

~~~
wellboy
One of the top 5 bloggers in tech.

~~~
evo_9
Be that as it may why should the poster be downvoted for this?

Whenever I fool myself into thinking HN is above petty ego bullshit this kind
of thing reminds me how mistaken I am.

~~~
dang
The comment was unsubstantive and arguably a bit snarky. Those are
downvoteable qualities on HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
stereo51
_That’s why I refuse to write on Medium or Quora._

Quora is also remarkably corrupt and has a habit of banning people who speak
out against bad practices in venture capital.

~~~
jacquesm
That's an interesting accusation but without anything to back it up it's hard
to assign much value to it do you have a sample of such a case?

------
justboxing
Tweet # 6 in her 'Tweet Storm'

> So I flipped to his feed, and sure enough, there'd been a post in November
> about him being in the hospital. I was never shown this post.

How does she know that she was NEVER shown this post?

Isn't it possible that she didn't scroll all the way past a few 100 status
updates, and the friend's hospitalization post was #101 in that scroll list,
and she just didn't make it that far with her limited attention span?

~~~
apetresc
Okay first of all - you're commenting on the completely wrong post.

Secondly, in reference to the story you _are_ commenting about, she says in
the thread that she always consumes her feed until she sees repeats. Not to
mention that she says _none_ of the people in that social circle saw the post.
At some point, if Facebook is pushing something down that many spots, it is
the same as never showing it. Everyone's attention span is limited.

------
joshua4
"People are often obsessed with needing to write original ideas. Forget it."

I hate him. Idiot! Fuck this guy

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

