At last, after months of utter procrastination, I am more than ready to launch my blogging website! 🎉🎉
Since the start of 2020, I had a simple idea replaying in my mind about creating my blog. It excited me far too much that I started thinking about it, not as a writer but as a developer.
I somewhat focused on the website’s design and functionalities than on the content that I wanted in my blog. Because of this, I did what most of us are guilty of doing, before starting a side project, that is, buying a domain. And, the rest is history.
Why am I Starting a Blog in 2021?
As the world went upside down, I too, became a madman. Being a senior-year college student, I had little time, owing to college course work and internships. I became less attentive to my blogging.
Back when I had begun teaching myself programming, almost two years ago, I always depended on people in the developer community. They would share their experiences through blogs and videos, backing me to learn a great deal, without a CS degree. Starting a blog is the reason I want to give back to the community. I want to spread my gained-insight so that people after me have an ample of perspectives to check out from.
What Inspires Me and Why I think I am ready?
Over the years, I have read an awful lot of blogs. I enjoy reading when I am weary of coding, when I am stuck on a bug, or whenever I crave to pick up something new. I have come across folks who have an engaging writing style and a natural way of explaining things.
To mention a few, I sought wisdom from Tania Rascia, Josh Comeau, Lee Robinson, Catalins Pit, and Shad Mirza. And I can go on forever. Since the list is non-exhaustive, consider this curated record of trending blogs by Monica Lent.
As an avid reader, I have grasped a handful of pointers, which would support me to create my engrossing content. My first real blogging experience was when I had to write about a hackathon. My club had organised it from scratch. Writing about something I had eager feelings for made me realise just how thrilling it all is.
However, my club always occupied hours in some project or activity, preventing me from fixing space for blogs and website. Yet, I persuaded my juniors to write on matters they were getting a hang on. And lending a hand in proofreading their blogs nurtured my motivation.
Despite everything, I have developed plenty of ideas about blogging topics. Subscribe, to stay in the loop! 😄
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I’m running a newsletter! I plan to send out an email whenever I create something new, curated with other cool things I find.
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My Initial Strategy
As of now, I do not have a decent social media following. I depend on my friends (and fine people such as you) to share my work. But to grow my blog, I will follow some steps shown below to raise traction:
- Cross-posting to dev.to and Hashnode, for they have the largest community of readers and writers.
- Running a mailing list to keep people up-to-date
- Submitting blogs on aggressive platforms like Reddit, Hacker News, etc. (though I would have to be extra careful there 😅)
Now, don’t take this the wrong way. I am indifferent to followers and views. This is just to keep my enthusiasm up. My prime focus is to create quality, extensively researched content.
Conclusion
If you made it this far, thank you for reading my first blog! This shows that if I can start one, then you can too. And you hear this from a person who took eight months to set his blog in motion. So, never give up, because it gets better.
Presuming that you want to know about how I built this blog from the ground up, have a look at my next post here.
2021, here I come!
git add . && git commit -m "feat: first post"
Have a good one. 🍻
Rohan