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61 Comments

Drop a blog article you're proud of

Happy Thanksgiving!! I'm trying to make more of an effort to read and write blogs to help grow my own platform. I wanted to see if any of you have written blogs that you'd like to share. Even though the content may not apply to my industry I'd still like to get some ideas for a writing style that works. Also feel free to drop any advice you have for writing a good blog.

  1. 4

    Hi David, great post & idea.

    I've started blogging regularly only a short while ago.

    Just today I shared a twitter thread with my ideas on how to start blogging regularly: https://twitter.com/basakbuilds/status/1331884726911721473?s=20

    My latest posts that I'm feeling good about:

    1. https://blog.apparent.today/why-do-babies-fight-sleep/
    2. https://blog.apparent.today/self-regulation-theory/

    But I'm still a beginner and learning every day. I'm also discovering my own editorial style by day. Things I wrote earlier kinda sound lame. 😅 Enjoying the process!

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      Thanks Basak. How often do you write blogs? I'll give these a read, thanks for sharing.

      1. 2

        A couple of times a week, 2-3. My ambition is to get to 5 per week :)

        1. 1

          Nice, good for you. Hope it works out

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      Hey Basak! Your twitter thread is really nicely made!

      I run Spread a tool that turns blog content into twitter threads. Can I help you get started? :)

      1. 1

        Hey Lou, thanks. I'm not in the need of such a solution yet. But thanks for creating awareness!

  2. 3

    Great post @djaenike, I am sure a lot of people might find these blogs useful.

    Quite recently, I wrote an article on ruttl blog about "How to graciously accept negative feedback" which I believe is something that can be useful to any individual.

    Let me know what you guys think of it
    https://ruttl.com/blog/how-to-graciously-accept-negative-feedback/

  3. 2

    Great idea David, just spend an hour reading various blogs posted. Thanks.

    I thought I could share a blog post I wrote almost a year ago but that, I believe, might still be relevant to people looking to secure grants/funding. Here it is:

    https://blog.granthackers.club/2019/12/13/eight-personality-types-to-consider-when-writing-grants/

  4. 2

    We relaunched Plausible Analytics with this post in April this year and we've been on a crazy ride since then partially thanks to the attention this post got:

    Why you should stop using Google Analytics on your website https://plausible.io/blog/remove-google-analytics

    The visitor count on this post is 67,000+ now! https://plausible.io/plausible.io?period=12mo&page=%2Fblog%2Fremove-google-analytics

  5. 2

    Here's my favorite:

    https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-become-a-better-programmer-by-learning-less-655f7e4abba4

    It's also one of my most popular articles, so luckily others also liked it :)

  6. 2

    Hey David, love this thought!

    I managed to write an article about Drake and network effects :) was super fun!

    https://jihadesmail.com/d6fa6afae6cb4256bf5b5f6b21179fe4

    1. 2

      That was an interesting read and was well written 😄

      How long did it take to write and how long have you been blogging, if you don't mind me asking?

      1. 2

        Appreciate you :) that post took me about 4-5 hours between research, writing, and editing. I’ve been blogging very sporadically for a couple of years now, but have recently been pretty consistent with a weekly newsletter and “mini-essays”.

    2. 1

      Love it, thanks for sharing

  7. 2

    Genuinely proud of this one, hit the top 6 on Hacker News (probably because everyone there loves YC). Unfortunately it generated a ton of cold email.

    https://www.richardesigns.co.uk/2020/10/27/what-was-remote-yc-like.html

    1. 1

      Well the emails just mean your blog was a hit right? Thanks Richard - I'll give it a read. Is there a word count you like to hit?

      1. 1

        I suppose! :-) Word count, well I think I try not to write too much (whatever figure that is, say 5000 words). A blog needs to be over 500 words as a min but other than that, why write more than needs to be said on a subject?

        Word count aims might make you artificially inflate your copy to reach that goal when the story you're trying to communicate could be done in fewer words.

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          Couldn't agree more. Working on a guest blog right now and I'm currently at 600 words and basically done. The person running the blog said they want it between 700-1100 words. I've never been verbose so hitting any sort of word minimum is a struggle

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            Then they're are optimising for quantity over quality. If there is one thing the internet does not need it's quantity!

  8. 1

    Was looking at a few open startups and realized that a lot of bootstrapped companies have WAYYY fewer users than I would have thought were needed to support someone. So I sat down and did the math for supporting 1 person, and added visualizations with emoji people 🙅‍♂️🙅‍♂️🙅‍♂️🙅‍♂️🙅‍♂️ .

    https://kevinquinn.fun/blog/how-many-customers-does-a-successful-side-hustle-need-just-99/

  9. 1

    Popular post from my tech blog:

    Title: What will happen to your Gmail account after you pass away?
    URL: https://www.ricksdailytips.com/google-inactive-account-manager/

  10. 1

    Got to the front page of Hacker news with this article

  11. 1

    This one was fun for me - basically just compiling some useful information that no one else had done before. Nothing special, just takes a bit of time.

    https://gregondata.com/blog/best-data-science-newsletters/

  12. 1

    Feels like a shameless plug🙄 but here's a case study article I'm proud of. I worked with the CEO of short term rental blog. We managed to get 6417 new organic visitors in 3 months. (woopwoop).

    Learned a lot from the value of the right process. Start with the problem, dive deep to get to know the customers and strategize the content from there. I genuinely enjoyed the project and I think it reflects in the post.

    https://flyingcatmarketing.com/gpfyp-case-study/

    Another tip that helped me when writing a blog post, I always try to keep the mindset:

    "write for the dustbin"

    Somehow it blocks my perfectionistic Maeva and speeds up the writing.

  13. 1

    https://kevoncheung.com/dissecting-dave-gerhardts-copywriting

    This is what I wrote recently and also it helps with writing a good blog post as well :D one stone 2 birds.

  14. 1

    this was my first blog post ever, so it may not be the best, but it gave me hope, which is a big feat for 2020. it talks about how we can apply design thinking to social innovation and why we need to in order to make genuine progress https://vedikadayal.medium.com/why-we-need-design-thinking-more-than-ever-right-now-4b545c43ba77

  15. 1

    I'm building a SAAS project with React and I've been looking for a good strategy for structuring CSS. This article summarizes the results of my findings: https://commandlinezen.com/scalable-css-architecture-react/

  16. 1

    Here is a blog post about Ada Compliance, this is an important concept that most of us don't give enough impetus to. That's why I decided to a write a detailed blog about it to create awareness. Would love to have your feedback.

    https://socialduce.com/ada-compliance/

  17. 1

    this article about the surge of retail investors, how they conduct stock research, and what an ideal platform to support their efforts would look like.

    also my first ever piece, so looking for as much feedback as possible!

    https://mohayat.medium.com/the-evolution-of-stock-research-in-the-robinhood-era-77a61163e9c3

  18. 1

    Hi David! It's nice to meet you!
    Here is a blog - actually a transcript of a talk - that I am proud of. It describes my journey of building a visual search engine for the beauty community
    https://blog.race-conditions.net/posts/how-to-build-a-lipcolour-search-engine-with-python/

    1. 1

      Very well written and also super cool thank you

  19. 1

    I wrote this article that I guess describes well our "new pandemic reality" made of too many video calls and #ZoomFatigue 😎

    https://meetlama.com/blog/zoom-fatigue-twitter-analysis/

  20. 1

    Hi, here is my last blog with useful and practical ways to decorate a rented flat :D : https://www.roombuddy.co/blog/en/6-ideas-to-decorate-a-rented-flat-on-a-budget

    1. 1

      Outstanding. Simple concept and very clear and concise. Nice easy read - thanks for sharing

  21. 1

    I'm proud of this post as it the first post that came out of my Zettelkasten.

    https://rasulkireev.com/get-what-you-want-nicely/

  22. 1

    Hi David! I'm proud of the post I published recently about why and how to start manual accessibility testing. It has been doing pretty well in terms of social shares, which isn't that common for me since I'm new to tech blogging and have a quite small Twitter following.

    https://devyarns.com/manual-accessibility-testing/

  23. 1

    I rarely have time to write a long-form myself. But when I do... ;)

    Here is one I believe is really useful to readers: https://www.volusion.com/blog/guide-to-overseas-expansion/

  24. 1

    I blog on tech and here are my proud pieces

    https://programmerspub.com/blog/octobercms/detailed-review-octobercms
    https://programmerspub.com/blog/general/raml-best-practices

    The best practice post was referenced in few mulesoft meetups as well.

  25. 1

    This is few years old now but something that I always share with new team members. Good customer service should be consistent and hence, boring:
    http://abhaga.blogspot.com/2012/01/great-customer-service-is-about.html

  26. 1

    Here's a recent one I'm proud of: https://medium.com/swlh/angular-11-in-depth-9a7372b4a600

    Took quite some effort, but will serve many developers for a while :)

    Writing it was an obvious choice after looking at the stats of my earlier "Angular 10 in depth" article.

    My advice is to write about different topics and look at the stats to see what readers are really interested in.

    I shared a few more ideas a while ago:
    https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/the-journey-from-4k-to-30k-views-per-month-lessons-learned-19fb8456bbba

  27. 1

    I wouldn't say it is the best article that I wrote but when I started a website then it was the first article that helped me in getting rankings, SEO scores and traffic. It was entirely written for reader's help purpose and wasn't a sponsored one. Have a look:

    https://digitalcruch.com/free-vpn-chrome-extension/

  28. 1

    A post I'm proud of is Leanpub and Lean Publishing.

    It's an overview of the Lean Publishing process (inspired by the Lean Startup) for publishing books as works in progress, and the Leanpub self-publishing platform designed with built-in support for Lean Publishing. I felt this post needed to be written as the process and the platform are still little known.

    My blogging advice is to provide an RSS feed for your blog.

    1. 1

      Thanks for sharing. By RSS Feed do you mean having a link to all the guest blogs you’ve written on your website?

      1. 1

        No, I actually meant the RSS format for a feed of all the posts published by a blog.

        1. 1

          Thanks I’ll have to study up on that.

  29. 1

    Recently published this blog post — https://taskito.io/dev/growing-your-app-as-an-indie-developer

    Spent around 10 days writing it, getting data / making charts and 2 days to refine and cut down. The best part about it is that it was well received in the community.

  30. 1

    I just published new one I'm proud of: How a tiny badge led to dozens of sales and hundreds of new followers

    Usually it takes me days to publish something. This one was written in an hour. I'm proud because I was able to step out of my usual comfort zone and just publish what's going on in my mind without overanalyzing it.

  31. 1

    Hello David, just some feedback for writing your articles. Get personal. Picture yourself in the seat of the reader, how would you like the tone to be perceived?

    Do you want to be quirky and fun? Serious and precise? A mixture perhaps?

    To help get me started with writing I used Grammarly (sorry for plugging) but they did have a tonality grader that helped me find who I was when I wrote.

    Then you have the other side of the coin, if you already have an existing audience, why don’t you ask them? What do they like about your writing? Could you improve? Not sure if these are things you’ve done already but they certainly helped develop myself on a level or two.

  32. 1

    Really proud of this, Crypto in Layman's terms.

    Wanted to write it forever, really topical wrt. building privacy focused applications and moving forward the public needs to have a basic understanding of these things.

    Hoping to add more "primitives" as I use them and can explain them more thoroughly

  33. 1

    We just launched our website https://onegate.app
    And here is the blog post I did for it:
    https://medium.com/onegate/how-onegate-helps-small-businesses-42a6965eb984

    Would appreciate your thoughts..

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      Thanks! Even sounds relevant to what I’m building. Haha ill try and get to this today.

    2. 1

      Good stuff! I’m probably going the Memberful && Discord route so it was great to see how it compares to other options

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