I have been thinking about having a blog for a while now but I can't really see what benefits it would give me? Seems like a lot of effort for something not terribly rewarding but maybe that is me being ill informed.
I've been writing blog posts for 10 years and I don't even write with the intention of anyone reading it, it's just nice to get my thoughts into words or document a project I've been working on (e.g. how to get some weird hardware to work, or what some weird error messages really mean). Having it be public is a motivator to make sure it's at least kind of coherent. Sometimes I get an email from someone who found one of my step by step guides useful, that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling which is the closest thing to a benefit I get.
I enjoy sharing posts because I enjoy the process of writing about something that inspires me. If I made progress on a personal project or learned something interesting, it is nice to take a step back and log it. I find that I can recall what I learned more if I wrote about it, and if I forgot, I have a place to look back on!
Publishing writing on a blog just makes this information public. I chose to do that since I benefit from the blogs of others, so I might as well make my learning and insights public, hopefully helping someone else too!
It's nice for stuff you might want to reference later:
1. Opinions you talk about regularly, that would benefit from a well-structured argument you can link people to instead of typing from scratch every time
2. That one StackOverflow post you need every 2 years but you keep losing it because the search keywords are weird
Like others have said, I write for my future self. I’ve been doing so for about 20 years. It’s extremely rewarding, for me, when someone emails me to say thank you. I’ve gotten emails from people saying I helped them lose 200 lbs (yes 200) or save $1000’s of dollars. That’s pretty rewarding.
For the curious, the person who lost weight was using a calorie tracker I built and wrote a blog post about. The person that saved money followed instructions on how to install old software on newer OS’s, saving them from buying a whole new embroidery machine (something I only did because my Mom needed help with her embroidery hobby).
It can be rewarding in a number of ways, most of which can be split into helping yourself and helping others.
To help myself, as another poster said, I record things I've learned, errors I have fixed, processes for e.g. setting up ssh securely or whatever.
To help others, most of the things that help me also help them. Every now and then I get a really weird error that no-one else seems to get and I have to solve it and then blog about it. Hopefully another 10,000 people don't have to go through the same pain.
At one point, I think I had about 200K viewson my blogspot blog but eventually I just came to hate the fact that they never seemed to update the site or fix any of the bugs on it so I went static and lost a tonne of SEO in the process but that will grow again!
I journal offline in a notebook. It's not "rewarding" in a monetary sense, but I still enjoy it and find it to enhance my life. A blog is similar in that it's like a journal except you can send it to people and get input in response.
There is a slightly different motivation when writing for the public. I have to take a bit more time to make things read well and clearly and this can help my general communication skills.
Engineers are often introverts and many can struggle communicating easily the ideas that they understand entirely but which are complicated. Blogging is a good way to challenge that and force you to abstract something well enough to explain it.
It’s critical if you’re an independent contractor or will become one some day. Writing blog posts about interesting projects or topics then submitting them to tech news aggregators (HN, lobste.rs, r/programming) pays dividends for years. Not even from the post itself necessarily, but it ensures you show up in search results. Much easier than writing a textbook, doing conf talks, or building a really good network. Plus it’s also nice on a psychological level, I feel I only get closure on projects once I write about them.
It gives some people good feeling when they can share good things with others. And some do it for self marketing. And some maybe for self esteem, like Instagram but tech stuff.
I had one that I published to every month for about ten years. I got some positive feedback, which was nice, but ultimately the effort of researching and coming up with what I considered quality content got to be more trouble than it was worth.
If you want a reward, then you’re right, it doesn’t make sense. Hobby sites are creative outlets, it’s about the enjoyment of making stuff just because you can.
kaashif|4 years ago
cturtle|4 years ago
Publishing writing on a blog just makes this information public. I chose to do that since I benefit from the blogs of others, so I might as well make my learning and insights public, hopefully helping someone else too!
ReactiveJelly|4 years ago
1. Opinions you talk about regularly, that would benefit from a well-structured argument you can link people to instead of typing from scratch every time
2. That one StackOverflow post you need every 2 years but you keep losing it because the search keywords are weird
sylvain_kerkour|4 years ago
dudul|4 years ago
codazoda|4 years ago
Like others have said, I write for my future self. I’ve been doing so for about 20 years. It’s extremely rewarding, for me, when someone emails me to say thank you. I’ve gotten emails from people saying I helped them lose 200 lbs (yes 200) or save $1000’s of dollars. That’s pretty rewarding.
For the curious, the person who lost weight was using a calorie tracker I built and wrote a blog post about. The person that saved money followed instructions on how to install old software on newer OS’s, saving them from buying a whole new embroidery machine (something I only did because my Mom needed help with her embroidery hobby).
lbriner|4 years ago
To help myself, as another poster said, I record things I've learned, errors I have fixed, processes for e.g. setting up ssh securely or whatever.
To help others, most of the things that help me also help them. Every now and then I get a really weird error that no-one else seems to get and I have to solve it and then blog about it. Hopefully another 10,000 people don't have to go through the same pain.
At one point, I think I had about 200K viewson my blogspot blog but eventually I just came to hate the fact that they never seemed to update the site or fix any of the bugs on it so I went static and lost a tonne of SEO in the process but that will grow again!
TheFreim|4 years ago
lbriner|4 years ago
Engineers are often introverts and many can struggle communicating easily the ideas that they understand entirely but which are complicated. Blogging is a good way to challenge that and force you to abstract something well enough to explain it.
ahelwer|4 years ago
Dma54rhs|4 years ago
commandlinefan|4 years ago
coffeefirst|4 years ago