Anyway, I agree with almost everything the article says, and there are some things in there that are not obvious to people who are just starting out, which I think puts it well above meh.

But, the one thing I disagree with is his first step when writing a blog post: brainstorm titles. I started that way, but I found I almost always changed the title and sometimes even change what the post is all about by the end.

I generally start with an idea instead of a title; then write down what I know about it; then I put those thoughts in an order that I can use to tell a story; then I research to confirm what I think I know is indeed factual. That is where it becomes interesting.

Sometimes I'm completely wrong, and the story becomes that -- the truth is often more interesting than the assumptions. Sometimes I discover things about what I knew that are more interesting than the original idea. Sometimes what I knew is true and I just back it up with facts and the idea alone was interesting enough to begin with. Lastly, sometimes it's complete shit and I shelf it until the time feels right or I find a new approach to the subject.

I’m 21, but I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years.

I grew up doing this.

What I’ve written on the internet has reached millions of people. Most of what I’ve written is in Italian, but I was also quite successful when writing in english. My Quora profile, reached 400k people in three months.

i feel like these are reasonable qualifications to give blogging advice. Your advice sounds good, but are you speaking from experience or is it just something that makes sense to you? what exactly do you find meh about his advice and why?

I don’t. As a 21 year old, 21 year olds are terrible at giving advice. There’s also the successful-bias problem, where you think you’re successful because of whatever you did, and that there aren’t other ways.

this is a generality. You omitted the next sentence where experience / results were presented. I would ignore most 21 year olds advice about snowboarding, but i would listen to everything Shaun White had to say at 15.

There’s also the successful-bias problem, where you think you’re successful because of whatever you did, and that there aren’t other ways

another generality (perhaps you're talking about survivor bias). in any case, these are general statements that may be true statistically but unless you tie them to the context of OP there is little relevance to this discussion

You missed the point. Young people, especially extremely talented ones, are terrible at giving advice. They don’t have nearly enough experience to recognize biases and will give out worthless platitudes like “always practice 6 hours a day” when the real key to their success is mastering some fundamental technique at a young age that they don’t even understand.

It’s like chefs that recite recipes with “a pinch of X”, “a splash of Y”, and “a sprinkling of Z”. This is completely useless to amateurs and is only marginally useful to professionals that might be able to deconstruct how the ingredients interact to get precise ratios.

Experience is experience.

An example: some people (like myself) really really care about blog design — it’s why I enjoyed looking at yours! I also like plaintext design and other stuff, but my point is I care. Your audience might not, considering how you defined it, but another audience might! Another example is the newsletter: you & your audience might like one, but Daring Fireball doesn’t have one and I like that aspect of the that blog.

So again, with all due respect, even your own points are contradictory. You didn’t look at blogging objectively — only what worked for you. Which is fine! Thanks for the advice. And please ignore mine — I’m 21. But hopefully you get my point.

I think that blogging is kind of like painting, coding, entrepreneurship or any other creative activity. Everybody that makes it starts giving contradictory advice on what worked for them, which is all good. As an individual your job is to make your own decisions. Having a lot of advices to pick from can help a lot in my opinion

BTW You seem like an interesting person, hit me up!

You're assuming equivalent intents. The OP's advice is good if your goal is maximize the size of your audience. Many people (and I suspect more likely in this crowd), the goal is to generate interesting and meaningful conversation. You do need some threshold of views for this, but beyond that threshold, a larger audience is not of benefit. And a really large audience becomes a liability - the conversation becomes less meaningful very quickly.

If you have a stackoverflow account with at least 500 points, click your user profile and check out the "people reached" metric in the top right corner. Prepare to be amazed.

TBH, there are few tips or rules. I have seen successful blogs that employ virtually every kind of format and style. Some that follow all the rules an others that break them all. First-mover advantage seems to be important. I'm sure the first person to blog about Bitcoin did well, but the 284th guy? Probably not so much.

Using a blue background with white text used to be an "easy reading mode" in Microsoft Word (with a simple checkbox to enable it). So, I wonder if there is some research behind this color scheme.

Look at waitbutwhy.com and julian.com they don't write about stuff they find on google trends and don't post regularly, yet they're among the best blogs out there

Terrible advice. If your blog proves popular, it'll be impossible for you to move away without losing your position in search engines. Lock-in.

Starting with a cheap shared hosting is a no-brainer.

It's true that plugins are not available except on the business plan, however the most common plugins are already embedded out of the box, you don't have to set them up. It's a great experience as far as not having to manage wordpress. An apprentice blogger absolutely does NOT need any additional plugin.

The pricing is both insane and cheap. I looked into upgrading and alternatives after my blog had above 100k visitors and almost 1 TB of traffic in a month. Believe it or not, there was nothing else cheaper.

The point is to write.