
Small b blogging - topcat31
http://tomcritchlow.com/2018/02/23/small-b-blogging/
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ArneBab
This sounds like blogging to a specialized audience -- which only works to
your professional benefit when you blog for the ones who pay you (maybe
indirectly by blogging to your professional peers).

It indicates a hierarchization of communication: you can only reach those you
already "won".

A somewhat related problem for blogs nowadays is that policing spam takes a
lot of time and effort -- you depend on the big platforms for that if you
don’t have a lot of time. The web became a much more hostile place, to the big
players’ benefit. That removes low-overhead communication among peers from the
benefit of blogs.

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weinzierl
I‘m torn about this. I really wish there was a renaissance of the blog or even
better, the _niche website_ [1].

I don‘t believe this will happen. The effort to write a high quality article
is the same whether you post it on your own small b blog or on Medium. So why
not opt for the larger audience if it has so few disadvantages.

There was a little window in time when there were no gatekeepers and the
technical savy could reach a large and quickly growing audience. But this is
over and the gatekeepers will never go away again.

[1] Like the _Juggling Information Service_. How many hours did I spend on
this site? I don’t know, but fun times...

~~~
akkartik
He's not really talking about where you write. He's just talking about
_changing expectations_ for writing. They're independent ideas.

Also, it's a canard that Medium gives you a larger audience. Even if everybody
is there, everybody isn't going to be reading what you wrote.

Bottomline: smaller targeted audience > larger unfocused audience. Step 1:
write about what you find interesting. Step 2: find your homies and show it to
them. They're hard to find, but they aren't captive to any single gatekeeper.

------
DoreenMichele
I do this and I have for years. I don't feel it has accomplished much of
anything.

I have 6 years of college. I worked at a Fortune 500 company for a time. I was
Director of Community Life for The TAG Project at one time. I was a moderator
on Cyburbia at one time. Those last two gigs helped me attend related
conferences affordably, though I was a homemaker and student.

My blogging has led to no serious career traction, in spite of being
interviewed by reporters repeatedly regarding one of my projects. Most of
those interviews never published. The one that did misgendered me and outright
made up specious quotes.

After 8.5 years on HN, I have exactly zero strong personal connections here.
There are like 3 people who email occasionally. I have zero actual friends
here. I have zero serious professional connections.

I was not homeless when I joined. At that time, I had a corporate job and an
apartment. So, no, that doesn't really explain it.

I do get hit on by men who know of me through HN. But that is about it.

When I comment that 99% of men have only one reason they would ever really
talk to me, it gets described as an _offensive exaggeration._ [1] I am not
claiming 99% of men do this to all women. Just me. It is firsthand testimony
regarding my own life. It is not an exaggeration. Think how offensive it feels
to me to be treated that way to begin with. Now add in dire poverty that I
cannot solve and then being told I am offensive for remarking on the reality
of my life.

So I find myself unable to draw any conclusion other than "sexism is alive and
well." I wish I could find another explanation.

The only thing I need to make my life work is a middle class income. That's
it. But that simply isn't happening and no amount of effort or other virtue
from my end is resolving the issue.

So my feeling at this point is "Maybe that (little b blogging to network)
works if you are a guy. It sure as hell has not worked for me and I very
strongly suspect that my gender is a significant factor in that undesirable
outcome."

I assume that means it doesn't work for most women. I assume that in part
because I appear to be the only woman to have ever made the HN leaderboard. If
there are scads of women here successfully networking via HN and/or little b
blogging to further their career goals, please speak up. Toss me a clue.
(Email is fine. You don't have to say it publicly.)

Given my background, I remain dumbfounded that this problem remains so
intractable. I don't think it should be this hard to turn my knowledge and
skills into an adequate income. But I consistently find that it backfires to
tell people "No, I actually am that competent" and no one ever seems to
conclude it on their own, much less vouch for me or promote me. I see men
promote other men here all the time. I don't get any of that. It just doesn't
happen.

Asking for help has not worked. Patiently waiting for 8.5 years to be noticed
has not worked. Complaining about my poverty gets ugly reactions to the effect
of "Shut up and go away." Trying to figure out how to turn my work into income
gets routinely pissed on. My favorite: some jerk on Metafilter said I was
_panhandling the internet_ for trying to figure out how to earn a living
online.

If someone would just show me the secret handshake, that would be awesome.

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16389666#16394963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16389666#16394963)

~~~
danielvf
Hey, _I_ know you on HN. I've upvoted a ton of your comments. We've also
commented quite a few times on each other's comments when we disagree with
each other. :)

As baseline, I've been commenting on HN for four and half years, 3813 karma as
of this writing. In that time, I've been emailed once with a question about a
project I've worked on, and once asking me to put some code on GitHub. Zero
offers for jobs, or offers for help. And that's totally what I expect.

A lot of your comments here, as are many of mine, are about what it's like to
live in America, outside the valley bubble. That's not the kind of things that
gets you job offers when compared with "How I used $HOT_TECHNOLOGY to save
$HOT_COMPANY 10 million dollars."

Congratulations! You've found a marketing approach that you've proven doesn't
work out for you! Now you just have to find something that works.

I've found that what looks from the outside like a secret club is really just
that when people work with someone competent for a while, they want to hire
them / work with them in the future. Every single one of my new clients in the
past fifteen years has showed up because someone worked with me before on a
project in the past.

People rarely trust someone just because the've read something they wrote. It
really takes working with someone on a project where you are in the trenches
together.

You site says you are a copywriter / community manager? Can you do volunteer
community management for an organizations some tech organization? Can you
somehow finagle some volunteer resume copywriting for Stanford graduates
through some organization? You'll never get anything from the graduates you
help, but it's the people in whatever non-profit you are working with that
will remember your skill and drive. Or anything that gets you working with
people who can hire you later. It snowballs from there.

As an aside, your site also looks a bit dated and very unfocused.

Best of luck!

~~~
DoreenMichele
I have given away my time and expertise for literally years. I have done tons
of volunteer work. People tell me all the fucking time they _value_ what I do.
But they will not pay me. This never leads to paid work. Ever.

I just answered questions for free for a YC company this week and informed
them I do the kind of writing they need. They can't be arsed to so much as
reply to my email with an acknowledgement that they have it.

I need income, not more opportunities to improve the lives of others for free,
get pats on the head and told to piss off about my sad sack story that I can't
afford to eat at the end of the month.

I have tried endless suggestions of what works for the guys. Email people and
ask for feedback. Email top people here who routinely talk about gender parity
in tech and have magnanimous invitations to email them any time. Buy a .com
domain to be taken more seriously. Put together some kind of portfolio.

I have been asking for advice for literally years on how I can turn my skills
and expertise into earned income and I get mostly pissed all over and bullshit
excuses.

~~~
danielvf
Yes, I wouldn't expect giving away your services to people/companies to get
you work. That's not so much working side by side with a person for a
prolonged period of time, as it is working in a dysfunctional, under
appreciated client/vendor relationship.

I've only given away work for free twice - once before I was a software
developer and once volunteering two or three days a week for six? years for a
NGO. Other than that, I charge everybody full price, including friends or
family, for anything related to my day job. It sets up bad working
relationships.

Again, good luck.

