Opportunities. You don't need many readers, you just need the right readers. I'm a big believer in making your own luck - putting things in place that make luck more likely to strike. Having a collection of writing online that people might stumble onto is very effective way of doing that.
> What kinds of posts actually worked (for learning, career, network, opportunities)?
I've written a bunch about this in the past. TLDR version:
- Stuff I've learned: TIL style posts that describe something I've learned recently
- Stuff I've found: links to things that are useful, with an explanation of why they are useful
- Stuff I've built: descriptions of projects I've completed
> Any practical format that lowers the bar (length, cadence, themes)?
TILs are an incredibly liberating format. You don't need to be describing something that's never been written about before - just something that's new to you today.
> If you were starting today, what would you do differently
I'd use static publishing on GitHub Pages on myname.github.io so I don't even need to run any web hosting or buy a domain name.
Yeah that's definitely a useful feature of Substack.
I'm the wrong person to ask about discoverability because I've been blogging for 22 years and I've accumulated 100,000+ followers on Twitter, 39,000 on Bluesky etc.
It's worth offering an email subscribe mechanism. I didn't do that for the first ~20 years - I offered just an RSS feed - but when I added the Substack newsletter option it become clear I should have been gathering email addresses from a lot earlier on!
Despite having a substantial audience visiting my site now I still think the best way to get traffic to an article is to tell people about it elsewhere. I follow the POSSE principle: publish on own site, syndicate elsewhere: https://indieweb.org/POSSE
Honestly though quality is much more important than quantity. Join communities of like-minded individuals and make sure that a small number of engaged people get to see your stuff. Opportunities from that are likely to be more valuable than if you have a much larger audience who aren't as closely aligned with what you're publishing.
Opportunities. You don't need many readers, you just need the right readers. I'm a big believer in making your own luck - putting things in place that make luck more likely to strike. Having a collection of writing online that people might stumble onto is very effective way of doing that.
> What kinds of posts actually worked (for learning, career, network, opportunities)?
I've written a bunch about this in the past. TLDR version:
- Stuff I've learned: TIL style posts that describe something I've learned recently
- Stuff I've found: links to things that are useful, with an explanation of why they are useful
- Stuff I've built: descriptions of projects I've completed
What to blog about: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/6/what-to-blog-about/
My approach to running a link blog: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/
> Any practical format that lowers the bar (length, cadence, themes)?
TILs are an incredibly liberating format. You don't need to be describing something that's never been written about before - just something that's new to you today.
> If you were starting today, what would you do differently
I'd use static publishing on GitHub Pages on myname.github.io so I don't even need to run any web hosting or buy a domain name.