Ask HN: Experience Starting a Blog Hello HN, What has your experience been in starting a tech blog? I want to start one as a way to explore and express my interests, which currently include HTMX, Django, Python, and data engineering. I am afraid of sharing though and getting negative feedback. Was that something that you pushed through when starting? Did starting a blog lead to a new job? Thanks! |
You most likely will get some negative feedback, but just ignore it. If you want to start one then do it
The hardest part of blogging is not giving up, I'd work on that.
It’s pretty neat, I’ve been able to get thousands of views due to a couple popular articles. I added comments as well to get any feedback. Link in bio.
Dev wise I just wrote it from scratch and ship minimal JavaScript for a better UX.
that way you would write to yourself.
if people like your stuff - they will email you.
people who don’t like your stuff wouldn’t email you - too much effort and harder to write nasty things over email.
I published my first blog post about a year ago and within the last year, I've written around eight essays in total. Most of them didn't receive much interest, with only a few of my friends reading them. However, two of my blog posts managed to make it to the front pages of HN.
One problem I encountered when starting a blog was designing my site. I knew that if I aimed for a very aesthetic website, the design and development process would consume most of my time, potentially preventing me from publishing any posts and resulting in a state where I give. So, instead of aiming for the best UI and such, I initially preferred my blog to be functional and easy to maintain. This decision led me to come up with a simple blog where, initially, the only things on my blog were the posts. I have built my blog using Hugo, a very simple static site generator that provides almost all the essential tools you might need for blogging.
I believe my essay writing skills have significantly improved since I first began. If you're not a natural born writer, it's most probable that your first attempts at essay writing won't be perfect. But, the key to better writing is practice. Which means you have to be prepared to write some imperfect essays to improve.
Just remember, your progress could be hindered by perfectionism if it stops you from writing out of fear of not living up to your own high standards.
> I want to start one as a way to explore and express my interests, which currently include HTMX, Django, Python, and data engineering. I am afraid of sharing though and getting negative feedback.
I recommend that you just go for it. I would not worry about any negative feedback as long as I try to respect people's boundaries, stay humble, and avoid making baseless claims. That being said, bear in mind that some people might try to discourage you, no matter how good your work is. For those cases, just keep in mind that the problem is most likely not your work being bad but them being a negative person.
Feedback can either be helpful (providing possible improvements for your writing), or it can be unhelpful (and even contain demotivating phrases). At times, it can be both. Focus on the helpful aspects of the feedback and ignore the unhelpful ones. If someone takes the time to give feedback on your content, it's often a sign that they see the topic worthy of giving time.
> Was that something that you pushed through when starting?
It is not something that I pushed through.
I often find myself explaining topics I'm interested in to my friends. I thought it would be great to write my thoughts and experiences on some of these important topics, so I could easily share them with my friends. I also find myself writing things down primarily for myself for solidifying my thoughts and providing guidance for later.
I already had enough reasons to write before starting to write publicly, I just realized that I could easily make these writings public with just a little effort. So writing a blog is more of a hobby of mine than a task. I won't write if I don't have the time for it. It's not something that exhausts me, as long as I don't do it with big expectations.
> Did starting a blog lead to a new job?
To give it a short answer, no. At least, not yet.
It's not really a problem nor is it something I aim to achieve through blogging though. If your ultimate goal is to secure a new job, it would probably be more beneficial to explore other alternatives.
Then don't. Don't add a comment section. Unless you have built an extensive community around your site, having open comments just invites drive-by criticism or generally people demanding, rather than stopping by to say nice things.
What I am thinking to add on my personal website, though, is a "send a reply" box at the end, where one can directly write to me, and I can respond via email. There is no promise of being published, which discourages spammers and drive-by snark, requires a valid email and promotes 1-on-1 communication which is much healthier and personal than the average Web 2.0 public comment widget.
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But, in general, do not write for an audience. Write for yourself. Write to get better at writing. Write because someone might find it useful, without having any engagement target. In that frame of mind, who cares if one doesn't like your content? The worst that'll happen is one will scroll by. They'll click the link, skim, and move onto the next shiny thing. We mindlessly and compulsively scroll down our social media apps until something piques our interest. This is the default mode of navigating the internet for most of us. If one stops by, spends time to comment on your post, it means they cared enough to.
I just list my email address. FastMail's spam filters are good enough that I rarely get spam so it hasn't been a problem. Occasionally I'll get an email from a dev asking following up questions or if I can help them with their code. It's nice to know that it's not just my mom reading the site.
That's what I did too. I added a mailto: link to the Hugo post template that also prefills the subject line with the title of the post when you click on it. The interactions I've had with this method feel much more meaningful to me than the average comment thread, for all the reasons @sph already mentioned.
My tips would be:
- Use Markdown. It makes writing so much more faster and takes away the focus from markup.
- Do not focus too much in the technical details. Content is still the king.
- That said, make yourself familiar and follow great typography patterns in your blog. Use legible fonts faces and sizes, clear separation, hierarchy, etc has the best impact.
- Have your email address visible. I find it be more effective than contact forms. You will get all sorts of feedback, but you can still decide if you want to respond to them. In my experience, people who take the time to compose an email tend to provide constructive and generally positive feedback.
- Decide a "tone" that you want to follow. For example, I have my technical content separate from personal, and travel content separate from the rest. It's sometimes refreshing to be able to speak in different tones.
- Be open about what you expect from the blog as well. If you hope to land in a better job, saying it openly won't hurt.
- You're probably overthinking starting it. Just sign up for a blogging service, don't try to set up your own thing unless you're going to use that experience and write about it. I have had a blog in plain html/css, a PHP-backed one, a self-hosted Ghost, a self-hosted Wordpress, and ultimately, I settled on not self-hosting a Ghost instance and it has been the best way to write because paying $9/mo is a lot easier for me than to update deps or manage bugs when I'm trying to write about something on my mind.
- Don't worry about the negative feedback. If or when someone leaves negative feedback, this is your blog, delete it. It's the easiest way to get rid of it. Some people just have negative attitudes, don't let them bring you down too.
- And another comment on feedback, most people will take time to leave feedback that's positive or encouraging because they want you to keep writing.
- Write for yourself, like get someone off your chest, think through things in your head, don't let the wider internet audience be the judge of what you should be thinking about or writing about. It will help you grow as a writer and hopefully as a person too.
If you see this, I hope you go out there and start writing.
You can take your blog in whatever direction you want; you can write technical, professional posts, or write about anything else that interests you! No matter what you write about, there is probably someone out there who will be interested in what you have to say. If you share your blog I'll take a look. Now you already have a prospective reader :)
I am unsure the extent to which my personal blog was weighed when I applied for my current job, but generally having a technical blog is a plus. Being able to point to blog posts where you have at least one post on a project you worked on, a bug you fixed, things you have learned, how you solved a problem, etc. is incredibly valuable.
I found that by taking time to collect my thoughts and write them down made them clearer and more persuasive. An unexpected side effects it that I started to have greater influence beyond my immediate team, with random colleagues emailing me about posts. Though it hasn't directly found me a job it has resulted in people asking me to apply to positions.
Later I added more technical content and tutorials about the problems I was immediately working on, partly just as a way of documenting things I'd found out and helping myself to understand them.
Overall I think it's been extremely valuable in terms of self development and my career (but this is heavily influenced by the fact I enjoy doing it)
I would say don't think too much about your audience to begin with and just write about things you're personally interested in. I've literally never had negative feedback/trolling (probably because there's no comment section). I have virtually met a number of people interested in similar topics who've contacted me after reading the blog.
Fwiw, by blog is https://www.robinlinacre.com/
Putting the first few articles online was nerve-wracking though. I would recommend getting them out of the way as quickly as possible.
Also, finding the right post length can be challenging.
My blog/articles about Go dev: https://www.willem.dev
I would avoid AI tools like Grammarly. They have a very prescriptive style that they think is the single correct way to write. You end up sounding like everyone else writing like that.
You will always have at least one reader of your work - yourself.
One of the best framings I have learned is to teach yourself by writing. Think of it as a conversation with your friends and you are learning together.
Take the negative comments as a motivation to improve.
Go for it.
I'm working on this myself, for myself, as I hope to become self-sufficient and not dependent on any one employer, and also to increase the reach of content for its own sake for the benefit of all, not just a single team/group/org.
Well that's the thing... You don't. It's a very passive approach if you are actively looking for a job.
Posting solutions to interesting challenges you come across has a lot of potential getting asked to interview for jobs that solve similar problems. A generic article about "top 5 Gen AI projects" will be fruitless, but a post about how you practically "abused ramfs to make database tests 5x faster" might be.
Yes, that can be a bit scary. It can be difficult to take criticism, depending on how you handle it. I know that if I submitted a post to HN and everyone was hating on it, I'd feel awful, but only because I have a lot of respect for this community's opinions. If it was a random person? Who cares.
But it's so good being able to get your thoughts out. And I don't mean just how it benefits your career, but also in personal terms. You'll meet great people who share your interests, and when someone meets you, they'll see a ton of interesting stuff about you.
That's how I feel when I look at someone's blog.
I'll also echo sph's warning not to add a comments section. But don't be afraid to publish.
> Did starting a blog lead to a new job?
Even better, I met my co-founder and got VC investment because of one of my blog posts (which got picked up and mentioned by a16z).
Slightly related to the point of negative feedback: https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/111687674935331566
Also, worrying about negative comments is counterproductive. If you get even one single comment in the first year or two, negative or positive you should be glad. I have blogs that have ran for 10 and 15 years with a comment field but without a single comment*
* except the spam of course, which made me write a spam filter. That was a nice little project.
I strongly disagree. The most likely feedback will be zero, zilch, none. So, you should clearly write for your own sake only.
Also: I'd bet that 95% to 99.9999% of your visitors the first three to five years will be bots only.
Do it for your own sake, if you feel like it. Otherwise don't. Blogging is not anything to be afraid of, and you should really not think that your blogging matters to anyone but yourself until you have proof of that.
You don't need to worry about negative feedback if you don't have a comments section. I implemented my blog myself with Django, and the reason it doesn't have a comments section is because I didn't write it, because I am lazy. But a side-effect of that is that the minimal effort it takes to open up a mail client and write something to the email address in the footer tends to weed out the lowest-effort shitposts & flames.
As for me, I started one (link in bio, as the kids say these days) thinking that it might become a tech blog, because tech is what I do all week, and probably what I know most about. And then it actually became me mostly writing occasionally about my car projects, because that is what I love. Don't worry too much about staying on topic, is what I'm getting at. "Be yourself" is a silly cliche (arguably not really a meaningful concept, either), but like, be yourself; regardless of the topic I can always read someone who writes about the things they are really passionate for.
Write, Write, and then Write some more.
What you will find is that when writing with your heart and not trying to write what others want to read, then you will grow into a better you.
But don't ever write for fame or status. It will swallow you whole and leave you with nothing else than hollow texts that you have no attachments to.
And read more too. But don't read things that you work with. Read masterpieces. Read and use what you to your advantage ti write more.
But write. Please just write.
I would say my last three job positions I got because of my GitHub and my blog. I do not have a degree, so my GH and blog are where I am able to demonstrate my technical know-how. My most recent job interview, the people interviewing me used my blog (which was listed on my resume) as content for questions about my skills and interests.
Regarding negative feedback, I would say that you may encounter some, however, in my experience, people just won’t read your blog if they aren’t interested. Additionally, you likely will only get people who really care about your content if they have to email you — and everyone who has reached out to me via email has been thoughtful and constructive in their feedback to me.
Additionally, many people in my real-life circles don’t really find what I blog about as that interesting. That’s why writing for you and nobody else is critical.
If curious, you can find my blog in my HN bio, and my GitHub handle is the same as my handle here :)
Good luck!
My motivation came from my younger days where everyone (including myself) had their own little corner of the Internet, made with things like AngelFire and GeoCities. I missed that.
Nowadays, I prefer to make short posts, e.g. [1, 2, 3]. Of course, before I started, I had to write my own static-site generator... It's been years since I've ran my Patreon and I don't post on YouTube like I used to, so there's little to no engagement - which is OK with me.
[1] https://shahinrostami.com/articles/different-adjustments-for...
[2] https://shahinrostami.com/articles/my-pen-plotter-setup/
[3] https://shahinrostami.com/articles/colours-and-patterns-whil...
I made one in 2014 (Blogger) then got bored and stopped. I tried again a few years later (Bloger, Medium, Wordpress), then got bored and stopped. I recently got interested in another attempt (BearBlog) which I'm looking into now. The issue for me was not a lack of topics but the opposite - I'd start writing about one thing and get side tracked and start writing about something else. A blog is a great way to explore your interests but it is important to stay focused on what you want to write about. I put too much emphasis on having a consistent output schedule and high standards on what I should write about, which eventually ended up with nothing.
> I am afraid of sharing though and getting negative feedback. Was that something that you pushed through when starting?
I used to be worried about this too and usually consulted my friends or some writing assistants at my undergrad. I think this goes away the more you write.
> Did starting a blog lead to a new job?
No but some people saw my posts and remembered them when they saw me in real life later.
I haven’t been active in promoting my blog, so I have not received much feedback at all (:
I imagine getting people to read one’s articles might involve quite much work and promotion. Could still be worth it.
My mom said my website was fantastic. Other than her I doubt anyone has ever seen it and that is fine.
> my main purpose is to record my thoughts/ideas/experiences
Mine too!
I must give credit to Kognise though, the style is simply their formidable water.css layout. It saved me a lot of time and anguish when I was about to get my blog started.
I've gotten a little negative feedback, but that's by far in the minority. Most people on the internet are very nice and I've gotten lots of friendly emails from people I've never met. Definitely give it a try - I would suggest doing a github.io page to get started, but you can of course go the self-hosted route if you're into that sort of thing.
I've had a blog since May 2021, although I haven't posted much: https://www.awanderingmind.blog/. Sometimes people send me nice emails. It hasn't helped in the slightest with getting a new job, but that's not why I write.
Yes, I got negative feedback, and still do, and I pushed through. However, that is because my blog was not just a tech blog. Keep it tech only, and the problem will be minimized, even if it doesn't go away completely. And as for the rest, just realize that those who are negative are louder than those who like your stuff.
Should you do it? Absolutely. It will make you stand out against others.
So, beside of disabling comments I'd suggest to start writing about something where no one can have really strong opinions. This will give you a good feeling about blogging.
I get sometimes feedback via mail and sometimes hints about bugs in the presented code of a posts. Which I'm really thankful for. Blogging is a great experience and people are really friendly out there. Try it out!
Meanwhile, I created my own plain PHP markdown blog, where you just write markdown files and it uses PHP/Apache to display them on your website: https://github.com/Cristy94/markdown-blog
The site has been up for over 20 years, I think I added the email address about 10 years ago. If it was a mistake and would result in massive amounts of spam surely I would have felt the effects by now.
See: https://developers.cloudflare.com/waf/tools/scrape-shield/em...