Every single reader on my blog that has sent me high-quality written material of their own has independently gone viral without any signal boosting from me. Off the top of my head, Iris Meredith, Mira Welner, Scott Smitelli, Daniel Sidhion. Usually within a few days of writing whatever the piece was, but sometimes months later.
Some of the posts weren't even remotely optimized for it. Daniel wrote about very nerdy NixOS optimization, Scott wrote a 20K story about the horror of bullshit jobs, etc.
Survivor bias is a real thing, but there's also a real dearth of quality writers out there. I'd encourage anyone who enjoys writing to do it for the love of the game, and as long as you occasionally show it to someone or post it on HN, good things will come.
My life was totally changed around the time I had 100 readers, and that number is extremely achievable. Going beyond that hasn't really helped me that much, as you quickly lose the ability to form deep connections with people.
(However, if you're frustrated by blogging then by all means, give up. I do think that what carries the writers above is that they're in it for the love of the crafts they're writing about in addition to being talented writers. Trying to grind out success sounds dreadful and I feel like it scarcely works.)
Most of them hit #1 on Hackernews or close to it. That's usually between 100K and 300K hits, and they're pretty high-quality hits since it's usually non-trash software engineers, contrasted with the twelve year olds you'd get if it was 200K YouTube hits.
Yeah the average quality is low that any writer even semi competent stands out.
Literally people who can’t even hold five complex thoughts in their mind simultaneously can become notable writers because the bar is on the ground for the vast majority of niches.
Now I am the one that provides the shitty jobs! Back to work, peasants! And don't let me ever catch you not maximizing Jira velocity, or time with your family is being moved to the backlog!
It isn't bad financially, but I make much less money than I did two years ago. If I had taken any of the jobs I was offered, I think it would have been a 30K to 100K raise. Also the number is slowly going up, and unlike a day job, no one will tell me I'm earning "enough". If I hit enough to salary myself 500K one day, there will be no social norms preventing HR from giving me that.
I am way, way happier. I've met some really amazing people from all over the world. I also have access to a level of technical mentorship that has totally changed the way I engineer -- but you get other people too. I've spent a lot of time with the mythical thoughtful CEO (can confirm that they are an outlier and the median CEO is as bullheaded as they appear), gotten the inside scoop on a lot of stuff that used to confuse the hell out of me, and last week got invited to a group of writers in Melbourne that are helping me get a book out! And it's also, for me, a special kind of awe-inspiring to meet people that have produced truly great literature. I'd never had had the opportunity before that.
That's like, roughly what you'll get at 100 to 200 people if you write things that repel the energy you don't like. At a few thousand subscribers it gets a bit hairier because you don't have time to talk to everyone. I'm also definitely someone that leans hard enough into the parasociality that it becomes regular sociality, which might not be for everyone, and perhaps I'll run into a real sicko one day and regret it.
Ahhh I didn't realize it was you I was responding to, I'm familiar with your blog and you definitely deserve your success.
>It was the end of the "stand up", which Valera had graciously been invited to. They did it sitting down, which was her first clue that one of the Chaos Gods was involved.
I still think about this line, it's just too good.
Some of the posts weren't even remotely optimized for it. Daniel wrote about very nerdy NixOS optimization, Scott wrote a 20K story about the horror of bullshit jobs, etc.
Survivor bias is a real thing, but there's also a real dearth of quality writers out there. I'd encourage anyone who enjoys writing to do it for the love of the game, and as long as you occasionally show it to someone or post it on HN, good things will come.
My life was totally changed around the time I had 100 readers, and that number is extremely achievable. Going beyond that hasn't really helped me that much, as you quickly lose the ability to form deep connections with people.
(However, if you're frustrated by blogging then by all means, give up. I do think that what carries the writers above is that they're in it for the love of the crafts they're writing about in addition to being talented writers. Trying to grind out success sounds dreadful and I feel like it scarcely works.)