It used to be that you'd get your traffic from Google. That one good tutorial you wrote would bring a steady stream of visitors for years. But for a few years now Google has a strong preference for fresh. Fresh links matter more than long-standing ones, fresh content will place higher than a more refined, but older take on the same subject... And there's a whole industry of people who spend their days, um, "paraphrasing" what you wrote. Can't win as a hobbyist :(

Finding the quality writing on blogs and forums is getting harder via Google. I love those old tutorials, but Google wants to recommend the same topics/websites again and again. The copy&paste spam blogs are hiding more knowledge behind paywalls and ebooks.

We need a new, more unpopular discovery engine for tech people and geeks?

There are pretty good search engines for discovering obscure corners of the Internet. I use Teclis[0] mainly for finding inspiration.

[0]: https://teclis.com

This doesn’t match the data I see coming out of Google Search Console

I can only speak for my own experience. I blog because I enjoy it and because it helps me stop repeatedly solving the same problems. It's essentially my long term memory published to a website. If it was only that and no-one read it, that would be fine. It has been going for more than 10 years now and I have no plans to stop.

TBH I only really started looking at traffic in the last year and I'm gratified it gets a bunch. But honestly not for the topics I would imagine (and often hope for).

The other useful aspect: writing about a topic flushes out my areas of ignorance and clarifies my thoughts. That's a useful exercise.

https://blog.johnnyreilly.com/

On the other hand, I write for me. I find it valuable simply penning down my thoughts so my future self can see what I was thinking of back then (or the events that happened in the past).

But that's just a private journal that could be a text file somewhere. People have been doing that for centuries without publishing it. If anything, it seems clear -- given natural human tendencies -- that an actually private journal that you don't think will be published seems more valuable.

It's not the same. There must be an affirming feeling to putting your thoughts out there and not getting pushback on it, you feel more confident in yourself. You could imagine what good things come from confidence

Same for me, I write to get my concepts and ideas ordered and polished. I think it is important to communicate with the public, even if you get no responses. 99% of users only read, 1% reply - still, you have an impact on both groups. Confirmation is really not necessary (and confirmation may also have a negative influence on behavior and incentives, see how Instagram affects motivations to share pictures).

I coded my personal site with a static site generator and connected it with a CMS. I did it to learn React and Gatsby. I write my blogs occassionally there. But you are right. Not even my friends give a shit

This is so true.

I'm one of the few that kept going out of a love for writing. It was only three or four years that I put GoAccess on my server, ran analytics, and realized that I actually had traffic!

If the motivation is intrinsic, it will keep happening until traffic comes naturally. If it is not, then it is easy to stop.

True, which is why successful blogs start out with the author just wanting to write. Traffic comes later. If you don't have a desire to write, rather than a desire to be read, your chance of success is low.

Harsh, but true in my experience.

I wrote a niche blog for several years. Why did I stop? Simply because hardly anyone was reading the blog!

At first, I was writing for myself and an audience was not important. But over time, I came to realise that, although the size of the audience was not important to me, the interest and engagement of readers did matter (especially for a blog with a very niche topic). Hardly any readers commented on my blog posts - which was important to me.

I don't regret writing the blog at all. Writing down my thoughts, experience or research all helped me better at writing.

And the main reason why they don't get any traffic and no one gives a shit is because they're either not promoting it or they give up too quick.

On the not promoting it side of things, there is too much disdain for self promotion. It's often looked down upon to promote yourself. So some people won't do it because they dislike others doing it. Their refusual to self promote hurts them more than others. The people who do self promote have a higher chance of success because they told everyone about themselves.

The giving up too quickly side of things, it takes time to build up a following, to build a reputation. You're not going to get 1000 views daily on your blog overnight. I've written multiple high traffic blog posts that are widely linked to, translated into other languages and even then, I barely get 100 users a day on my site when I'm not actively promoting it and creating new content. Most of my blogs probably get 1000 users overall. Very few get 1,000 users in a day. Sure if I keep building up my content and I'm more consisent it'll eventually get to the point I'm getting 1,000 users a day. But it's going to take time. And most people aren't willing to invest that time.

> The number one reason people give up on blogging is because they realize no one gives a shit and they have no traffic

I heard this one idea in a software development conference a while back, that went along the lines of: "Your keypresses will be more valuable if more people benefit from them." which was essentially talking about private notes possibly being more wasteful due to less impactfulness.

That's kind of why I still write things in my personal blog (and am actually working on a blog/video series about opinionated software development) even though it's not too popular.

So that in a few weeks/months/years when something that I have previously jotted down will be relevant, I'll be able to just share a link and offer up my points without trying to recall all the minutea.

That actually extends to writing about the failure modes of software, e.g.: https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken/nginx-confi...

It doesn't have to be the best writing out there, or even correct 100% of the time, it just needs to serve as a historical record.

this might sound selfish but for me I think part of it is it's no longer special. In 2002-2003 I was having fun doing something semi-rare, post thoughts online. That all changed with Facebook and Twitter. Suddenly everyone was doing it so it was no longer special or at least that's how it feels.

It's also that I have nothing to say anymore. I'm not sure which is the bigger reason. I didn't have all that much to say in the past I think. I just found random stuff interesting and wrote about it. But that goes back to the top issue. Anyone can tweet or post to their facebook in moments so it feels mostly pointless to try to share in an ocean of sharing.

At the moment having a well made Youtube channel seems like the new similar outlet. It's hard enough that it's semi rare. Sure anyone can post themselves just talking about stuff but not everyone can make Veritasium, Primitive Technology, Kutzgesagt, CGP Gray.

Let me also add, at least for me, it wasn't a small amount of work. A typical post took ~8hrs. 4~5 writing, editing, correcting and another 2-3 hrs editing images. There were shorter posts but the ones that made it feel worth doing were the longer posts.

If you have an rss feed and post something here that aligns with my interests I will always subscribe, travel a lot and the feed reader works a charm when the internet goes out.

I love the lowkey dev blogs, they don't try so hard and often have unique insights.

I get a decent amount of traffic, but I'm not sure that helps. Just creates pressure to write things that are worth reading, even though I'm primarily writing for myself. It was much easier to write when my audience was 95% bots.

I think my biggest obstacle is finding the time. Writing something worthwhile requires a decent chunk of time and brain real-estate. I have many other projects that also require the same, and juggling them all is hard. I kinda wish I had more time to write, because I really enjoy it.

I personally just have a static site without comments or statistics of any kind.

This isn't a bug, but a feature so that everything I write is because I want to, not because I want to chase traffic.

yeap, this.

On the one hand, the first youtube video I uploaded got 16 comments and about 1000 views in 50 days. Obviously this isn't "viral" but it's a lot more engagement than I've ever gotten with blogging or microblogging.

True. I get traffic from google with technical blogs, but no body really gives a damn about who you are as a person, your interests other than coding etc.

Which is why community sites, such as Livejournal before they sold out, or Dreamwidth, or even Medium or Substack, help.

well you got bot traffic, and various attack attempts, and web scrapers once your content becomes even marginally relevant...