I started this blog in 2013. I was active for 5 years, with a lot of ups and downs. I took a long break and wanted to review what worked and what didn’t, before I started posting again.
I go into more detail in the following video, if you are interested.
The short version
I hit a golden age in my first few years. Some of my posts did really well. Examples include git tips, AngularJS performance, a Node.js memory leak guide.
Then I wrote Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic about AMP, which went viral on Hacker News. I got hooked on the attention and tearing things down instead of building things up. That went on for two years, took a real emotional toll, after which I mostly went quiet.
I learned three valuable lessons from my first time around the block.
1. If you give it away for free, free is what you get
You’ve heard the advice: don’t worry about money, just build something people want, and money will follow. This does not work the way people say it does.
I invested years of late nights into this blog. Real traffic, real reach.
Over the years I made about $300–400 total from AdSense and affiliate links. Enough for a few family dinners. About a penny for an hour of work.
Working for free is fine – but you have to decide that on purpose, up front. If you think that your project might become a business, set it up that way from day one. It is really hard to retrofit a business model onto something people already expect for free. And if you’re doing it for fun, set your own expectations accordingly, so that success doesn’t leave you resentful that money in fact did NOT follow, even though you did build something that people want.
2. Building up beats tearing down
My anti-AMP posts were home run after home run. My helpful, constructive posts in the same period? Crickets. I let it train me, and it made me somebody I didn’t want to be – a creator chasing drama and milking controversy. I wanted to create quality content.
The internet won the AMP fight. Nobody even remembers it now. But the memory leak guide from 2015 still helps people.
3. Pick a setup where the desired outcome is possible
Monetization is built in now. YouTube and X both pay creators proportional to views. I don’t have to pack my site with crappy ads to make a profit. I just need to create something worth watching. That’s a much healthier deal than what I had before, and it’s the thing that broke me the first time.
I’m not quitting my job over this. But even $100 a month for quality content would make me happy – and more importantly, it means the incentives are finally pointed in the right direction.
What’s next
Going forward I plan to create content about what works for me (and what doesn’t) in the age of AI. Tooling, strategy, what surprised me etc. I want to focus on building things up, not tearing something down.
We moved from the Bay Area to LA in 2021 and my tech world got an order of magnitude smaller. I have some thoughts and would love to hear your take on it.