How Do I Start a Blog? and Related Questions

This article exists because at least three people have asked me this question already and I want some place to which I can point them. Maybe I’ll eventually write a less tongue-in-cheek post about how and why I blog, but for now, you get this.

How do I start a blog?

You start a blog by writing stuff and posting it on the internet, preferably on a website (or a section of a website) that is dedicated to that purpose. Like, maybe you could argue that writing very long twitter threads is a form of blogging, but I’d probably side-eye you if you tried that argument on me.

It’s probably best to keep it low-stakes and not take it too seriously. Personally, I try to operate under the assumption that I will be the main reader of my blog, and then I make sure I’m writing stuff that future me will find interesting or useful to revisit.

What should I use to host my blog?

It depends. There isn’t a single way to do it. I used to use wordpress.com, until I got sick of it and quit using the platform. I considered going to wordpress.org to have similar features, but then felt like a full-on content management platform would be overkill and not flexible enough. I’m a big proponent of having as much control over the site as possible, which likely means self-hosting your blog somewhere. You might not actually need or want that level of control, though (or perhaps you find dealing with code intimidating, which is fair).

If you like Markdown and want a zero-hassle solution, mataroa.blog seems pretty cool, though it does cost a little bit of money. Some people blog on their existing websites. Some people use tumblr, which I actually think can work really well! Lots of people are using Substack right now. Just avoid really tacky free website builders like Wix or Weebly, which will put banners all over your website and were never designed to host blogs.

I guess there’s also Medium. If you use Medium, I will side-eye you. Medium sucks.

Also, as a side note, a lot of people are calling their blogs “newsletters” now, but they’re really just professionalized blogs that you may or may not pay for. The words “newsletter” and “blog” used to mean pretty different things, and I find it frustrating that the semantics are blurring in such a mainstream way.

I blame Substack for this development.1 I swear, everyone is on Substack now.

What do you use to host your blog?

At the time of writing this post, my blog is a static site built with Hugo and hosted on Cloudflare Pages. It’s based on the Whiteplain theme, though I’ve heavily edited it at this point. I’ve also added some additional features. I mean, that’s the point of having full control over the site, right?

What should I post on my blog?

You should post whatever you want and can live with random people reading. A blog should be a place where you are freed from the shackles of social media expectations, or even the shackles of expectations in general.

It’s your space, you do you. Please try to avoid feeling like you have something to prove with your blog posts, or like you need to write them in such a way that a potential employer will like them. It’s a blog. It is not that deep.

How can I get views and build an audience for my blog?

I can’t give you advice on how to get views. I don’t collect analytics (by choice) so I literally have no idea if anyone is reading this website unless people tell me they are. I don’t want to have my writing output be corrupted by what an audience thinks of it, so I probably won’t ever enable comments here, either.

Anecdotally, a few people have told me that they stumbled on this site through the CU Webring, which hosts links to the personal websites of students and alumni of my university.

The best way to get a wide readership is probably to get people to share links to your blog, preferably on the front page of Hacker News or, I don’t know, reddit? You want the link to be widely shared in high-visibility places. I have no idea how to do that and don’t particularly care, either. Go ask someone with actual internet clout or something.

I want my blog to actually be good, do you have any advice?

Sure. Are you new to writing? If so, you’ll have to make one of two choices:

  1. Quit worrying about whether or not the blog is “good.”
  2. Stop blogging and write stuff offline until you think your writing is consistently “good enough.”

I really don’t recommend the second option, because you might never feel like it’s good enough, and an imagined (or even real!) audience is very good motivation to improve.

If you’re not new to writing and you’re asking me this question, then come on, you should know better than to ask these sorts of questions. The best way to make your blog good is to write it about stuff you care about, and the only way to make it better is to keep writing it.

Right. So do you have any other advice for starting a blog?

Other than not taking yourself too seriously? Sure. Don’t set unsustainable goals for yourself. It’s more important for the process to be fun than it is for your output to be consistent.2 I think if I aimed for consistency of any kind on this blog I would have given up by now. I try not to promise that I will post within a certain timeframe or that I will post about specific topics. In fact, I promise nothing.

I guess if I had to give writing advice specific to blogging, I’d say to publish things that are finished but not polished. My first drafts will typically be cluttered (too many ideas) and underwritten (not enough detail), so in my second draft I might split off a few sections and add a whole bunch of words to finish and/or clarify my point. But after that second draft, I usually just proofread once for typos/grammar/clarity and post the article.

No, I don’t get to publication quality in two to three drafts, but there’s no point to aiming for publication quality on a blog. This is for three reasons:

  1. Who knows if anyone will read it?
  2. No one reads blogs expecting publication quality writing, anyway.
  3. The vast majority of publications won’t accept work that has already appeared in a blog, so the effort required to get your work up to that level of quality is wasted if you then publish on a blog first. If you ever do get the chance to republish in a more legit venue, you’ll have the opportunity to do more substantive editing and polishing at that stage.

What should I write my blog about?

Why are you still asking me for advice?

I don’t know what you should write your blog about. Sometimes people deliberately choose to write themed blogs, and sometimes they don’t. I had a themed blog at one point, and I gave up on it because I couldn’t sustain a blog focused on a single interest for very long, but there are also people out there like Derek Guy, who has spent his entire career writing about classic menswear. You might be the type of person who is energized by self-imposed constraints, or perhaps you already know where your interests lie. In that case, maybe you do want to write a themed blog. Or maybe you feel stifled by constraints, in which case, the better approach is to leave it unthemed. (Honestly, a theme will probably emerge by itself anyway. That theme might just shift over time.)

I don’t know you. I really can’t tell you what to do, I can only tell you what I do. Personally, I like to say that my blog is about whatever my blog is about that day.

But really, don’t get too far ahead of yourself. Just start the blog and follow your interests, and eventually you will figure yourself out.

I guess that is my real advice for anyone starting a blog: follow your interests. Be curious and write articles that pass the “why would I want to read this?” test. If you’re curious about something, chances are, someone out there is too. Interesting blogs are written by interested people.

Why do you care so much about blogging?

I blog because many writers and otherwise cool people that I look up to have blogs, and I want to be cool too. My number one blogging inspiration is Cory Doctorow, who has turned his practice of documenting, commenting on, and weaving together ideas from multiple things he’s read into some of the most insightful essays on technology I’ve read. You don’t get an essay like the enshittification essay without having that sort of writing practice.

Actually, he’s written an essay3 on why he blogs: https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

I admire the ethos, but I can’t sustainably do it, and I’m jealous. I’m just trying to write enough here that I get at least some of the benefits of blogging.

You actually only told me why you blog. You didn’t tell me why you care so much.

No, I did tell you why I care. But here’s another reason, if that wasn’t enough: I blog because writing is thinking, and I really appreciate the practice of clearly organizing and communicating my thoughts. I like that it helps me declutter my brain, too. I like that I can write an article once and point people to it instead of repeating myself. I really, really like sharing knowledge and trying to uncover ideas and knowledge that are new to me. And I also enjoy the way that writing about ideas generates new ideas.

I care about learning and sharing what I’ve learned, and I care about being able to do it on my own terms. I write this blog because I’m the kind of person who enjoys doing this sort of activity. At this point, I’m just wired this way and I’ve been a writer for too long to be able to sort.

Once a writer, always a writer. Help.

What are some blogs that you like?

Look, I don’t follow any of these blogs regularly or anything. These are just blogs that I check every once in a while and find interesting. I’m listing these off the top of my head, so I’m definitely forgetting a bunch.

Mostly, I stumble across blogs while I’m doing things. Sometimes I remember them, sometimes I don’t. But I always, always appreciate a good blog.

I should probably point out that “good” means “interesting to read and think about.” It does not necessarily mean that I agree with the author. It is unhealthy to only engage with ideas you agree with.

Is there anything else you’d like me to know?

Sure, here’s a list of random additional advice.

  1. Write as you, not as someone else. This is a really good chance to figure out your own writing voice and communication style. You do not have to write in a stilted academic style. You also do not need to structure a blog post like an academic essay.
  2. You’re allowed to like your own work! Please don’t feel like you need to be self-critical of everything.
  3. If you really want to improve, you probably will want to look at your old writing and reevaluate its quality every once in a while. Critically thinking about your own work is an important skill.
  4. At some point you might want to keep a list of ideas somewhere. And keep a place for in-progress drafts. The more you write, the more ideas you get, and you probably don’t want to lose them.
  5. You’re allowed to kill your blog and start a new one if you don’t like it anymore. You’re also allowed to just quit if it isn’t fun anymore. That being said, I really don’t recommend deleting any posts. If you need to take stuff down from the internet, just private it in some way. No matter how bad you think the current state of your blog is, future you will regret it if you permanently delete things. I wish I could go back and read my blog posts from back when I was 12, but I can’t, because I permanently deleted them.

  1. Even more frustratingly, some people are just calling their blogs “Substacks”, which is probably because Substack is currently evolving into a social media-ified version of longform writing online. Large platforms ruin everything. ↩︎

  2. Unless your goal is to get views, perhaps. But as I said, I don’t know shit about how to get views, so if that’s what you want, go bother someone else. ↩︎

  3. My favourite part of this essay has to be this sentence: “Virtually every sentence that contains the word “brand” is bullshit, and that one is no exception.” ↩︎