My perspectives from blogging for last 10 years
Published: 2021-04-28 06:39:27

My perspectives from blogging for last 10 years


Before I write about perspectives, let me add a little background here. The perspectives would be merged within the article, ( like a salt to sambar, if you have tasted sambar, you have tasted salt, but sambar tastes odd without salt ). I couldn't bullet it down to present to the patient reader.

I don't write blogs on smartphones. I have written blogs on programming, system design.

I started blogging in the year 2011.
Initially it was about general topics, and not related to tech.
I had written a post about a hypothetical incident, with little bit of comedy in it.
Soon, I got into the working mode, when job started pulling me away from comedy writing.
So, I started writing tech articles, I remember writing something related to java static code analysis - Coverity.
I figured that, if you keep your title matching with the exact problem faced, then you would get lot of hits to your blog. For example: Coverity might say something about null values or it could be about static inner class. Most of these, you could read from FindBugs documentation. So, I went ahead and wrote an article, assuming that lot of developers like me would be using Coverity and it would be helpful. It would be helpful in the sense that, I would provide a solution, which could solve their day to day problem. Yes, it worked, there were few hits. I was kinda happy.

Later I realized that, the traffic had come down.
Now I had to figure out what are the trending topics, write some articles around them, to attract traffic.
Soon, I started writing some articles about machine learning.
But, to be honest, it was not exactly related to the day job, but, something I picked from reading machine learning documentation and if there were online trials, to experiment, would do that and share, but, still it lacked a sense of originality.
There were hits, for example, I had written an article about Tensorflow, when it released. 
But, what I personally observed is that, people were not commenting at all.

I started searching for blogs which actually had lot of discussion. I found a blog by Carpathy, currently heading Tesla AI, I guess. Obviously, his blog had lot of sense of originality, in fact , his day job revolved around machine learning, in fact, the guy had published few papers. So, when he says something, people listen and he had a good way of writing, people could relate to. The illustrations provided in his articles, especially about Recurrent neural networks - sometimes evoked a feeling in me, as if I had solved that problem OR soon, I am going to solve a problem, write an article and people would just adore me. But, this was far from reality.

Yes, reality. Reality is a strange word, in fact, it is the word closest to truth. Sometimes, we wake up from our fantasy woven life - for example - we assume that, things would come to us in life. I had to wake up multiple times from this fantasy woven dreamy life ( I still day dream a lot, thinking that am a googler discovering something wonderful , helping humanity - sorry readers, I totally agree that, you do not need to be a googler to have a positive impact, yes yes, I just want to shake hands with you and appreciate your point of view. but, that's just me, the dream to be a googler, the feeling of getting that professional email address and the feeling of working on 'Google' stuff). Readers, apologize me for the detour - it was a day dream which got into written format.

Let's continue the blogging journey, if you are still here with me. So, one day, I discovered Hacker News. I found that, if your article takes a hit in Hacker News, then your blog's traffic would spike. At the back of my mind - upvote in hacker news ==> spike in traffic ==> demand for ads in my blog would increase ==> I would get some $$. Yes, to be honest, I was planning to enable Adsense in my blog. If you remember the Coverity article, yes that and few other 'how to' java articles had gotten enough traffic to convince Google to enable ads on my blog. Little did I realize that, Hacker News could also downvote your article, to an extent that, the users will start distrusting your submissions. And downvote means that, some users did not appreciate the content. 

I realized, based on my views/ thinking - did your article evoke a sense of curiosity in the reader? did it provide a new perspective to the reader? did it educate the reader with something ? did the reader feel that, 'oh man, who's this guy/girl, how did they manage to implement this / discover this / - how is this possible?', its like this figuratively -- imagine the reader who's hurrying walking to their office in a busy road, they comes across your article. They just drop their suitcase and their focus shifts entirely to your article - something like that, probably i am exaggerating here, but I guess, I have made you understand my point. If this happens to a hacker news reader, then you can expect some upvotes, probably, lead to discussions also. There are many ways to do it, as I observed. Sometimes people write articles stating, why they do not like some programming language. And you have people taking sides and arguing. So the article formed a sense of feeling - as humans, we tend to get attached to the language we like ( and not we work with daily ), there are java programmers who like python for its simplicity of expression, even though they made not use it daily. But, I could not write such an article, because I did not have experience in multiple programming language, to the depth, in which I could debate about the features of multiple programming languages.

From the last paragraph, if you are still here with me, it was about evoking a feeling within the reader - a feeling for technicality of course. So, as a result, my article got downvoted because it was not something 'original' and I could not work on a weekend project to share my output with the world - nowadays, you have netlify to just host your projects and share with the world. But, in those days, yes, just 4 or 5 years ago, it was not straightforward.

This paragraph is a little detour about my observations about other kind of blogs, which did seem to get traffic. ( Yes, I was kind of obsessed with traffic - my browser had few tabs open only with stats page, just to see, if somebody showed up to my blog. One day, as I walked down the streets to buy vegetables on the road, as I saw a seller advertising his items to the public by shouting 'onions 20 for 2kg', 'tomatoes 15 for 2 kg' etc - I could see myself in him for those moments. Here is he trying to attract buyers of vegetables. He has vegetables in his basket. And I am in no way different from him. I have written some articles in my blog. And I have to go to reddit, hackernews, facebook, twitter, linkedin ( I hardly went to linkedin, to share article ) - and advertise my articles, just to see that, at the end of 2 days, nobody would buy vegetables from me. I did not have good vegetables, probably they did not want to cook those vegetables. So, let me come back to other kinds of blogs which did have traffic - you know the ones - I will call them meta blogs - blogs about blogging - yes, this is the term i am giving. There are lot of blogs which talk about - how to make money from blogging, how to be a great technical blogger , how to improve SEO for your blog - these are the most catchy titles and these are the blogs , which, at the end of the day, win from traffic. ( of course my observation is skewed, I have not done some data analysis and come to some experimental observations ). These meta blogs keep winning even till today. You know why? I already shared a secret above - it evokes a feeling with the user - it takes the user to imaginary castles. Of course some blogs have won, because they help people in their daily life - like I observed that, if you write about interview questions - definitely it will spike in traffic. Because people really want them. They want to succeed in their interviews. And if your article has the right set of terms, example code for the interview question - then it will be a huge hit.

I did not have much patience to use keyword planner by google / bing. I did some research too and found some hits based on that, but, did not have the energy to write those articles, because it did not reflect my day job. Yes, my day job involved programming, I could write about that, but, there were too many 'good' blogs related to that.

My latest observation is : Youtube videos.
Yes, forget blogging, start creating content on Youtube.
In hindsight, I was wondering, why I did not pursue Youtube all these years ? Mostly, at the end of the day - it is our own insecurities about ourselves which hinders our progress.

Why content on Youtube ? Because, this is the latest consumption model and not articles. People do not have much patience - atleast the latest generation - atleast in my opinion - to sit and read articles. People have gotten so used to Netflix or streaming - that, the form of media consumption they prefer is Videos - so, Videos is the best way to reach audience .
And what wins within Technical area - is handson programming videos/ beautiful animations to understand technical concepts.

Please understand, I am not promoting some brand here.
Atleast from the point of view of content creation and media consumption, I believe that videos is the new fad.
You know something, 'Shorts' is the latest fad in video. Why ?
People do not have patience to watch long videos?

At the end of the day, each viewer is unique in how they consume content.
Each content creator is unique in how they produce content.
Each content creation platform is unique, in how they bridge both content creators and content consumers.

My other perspective was that, bloggers like me, who have spent most of their lives , trying to create some technical content, expecting some kind of traffic, we have been in some kind of endless waiting for 'something to happen'. I am not sure, how many feel the same way or 'felt the same way'. So recently, I started looking at the industry and what other people are doing. They are 'upskilling' and 'interviewing' and getting into companies, to improve their lives and for their families.

I realized very lately, at the fag end of my time , that, blogging has been pushed to the sense that, people start assuming that, it could actually help people make money. So, they end up spending their lives with it, but little they realize that, there are other avenues to make money - upskill , interview and join new company. And if you are interested to work in the same company - try to understand how you can contribute to your job, in a effective way.


People also say, that, for blogging to make money, it takes time, you have to build audience, then you can get ads etc. But, let me ask you - is it worth the effort ? Sit back and reflect, think on your own - is it worth the effort ? If you have passion for writing, please go ahead and do it, but if you think you can make money through blogging and by writing tech articles, please think for a while. There are other ways to make money - because, when you upskill with hands on projects to showcase to people , it is going to bring some value to the company which is a potential employer. So, think from that perspective. Is it worth writing about things - which is already written heavily in the internet ( java or reactjs? OR, can I spend sometime, to do the actual handson work, to try out that program, upskill myself, add to my resume, solve some problem and face some interview and probably change job, to improve my life and family too ? If you think you want to make money, with writing, there are other ways as well - content writing.  Don't blog, for the sake of blogging. Blogging definitely helps people, if you share tips and tricks from what you have learnt, but do not mindlessly spend time on blogging. ( At the end of the day, what companies want are: people who can do the job - skills (show your credibility with projects - hand son - not just forking/ cloning, but, building projects ) & people who can communicate well (show your credibility with understanding what your manager needs as to how the tasks need to be planned/ completed effectively for the project, understanding (& sometimes conveying / openly asking) what the company is trying to do from a big picture point of view, how you can sort out misunderstanding in meetings or bringing people on same page , setting expectations from customer etc ) )

Stop, See, Sit back, reflect, pause, think , introspect.

Though I wanted to write specifically about blogging, but, its the reflection which was waiting to be shared with others. Hope this post helps someone with some perspectives.

Peace.