Why You Should Start Blogging (Even If Nobody Will Read It)
Let’s talk about the, now almost dead!?, art of blogging…
And not just blogging in the narrow sense of "write articles on your own website", but the broader idea of putting your knowledge out into the world. That could be blog posts, videos, podcasts, open-source projects, documentation, or any other format where you share what you’ve learned.
The TL;DR really is: you should start.
Not when you feel "ready".
Not when your writing is perfect.
Not when you have a huge audience.
Now.
OK, but why!?
Because blogging is not just about building an audience. It’s about improving your thinking, sharpening your writing, documenting your journey, and creating opportunities for yourself that would never appear otherwise.
⚠️ Oh, and just so I address the elephant in the room – using the latest LLM can surely help you, but if you don’t even edit the text and bring in "some of your own spice to it", you’re missing the point.
If you’re more of an audio type, you can listen to the podcast episode on this topic.
Blogging is bigger than "just writing blog posts"
Blogging is part of a much bigger picture. You do not have to publish traditional blog posts only. The point is to share what you know. That can happen through:
- podcasts,
- YouTube videos,
- talks,
- open-source projects (contributing to documentation is also great!),
- and of course, blog posts
The format matters less than the habit.
What matters is that you stop keeping useful ideas trapped in notebooks, local files, or your own head. Now, frankly, notebooks are where I started; I used to carry them everywhere and write down programming-related notes. At some point I wanted to find something in one of them and thought, "Wouldn’t it be amazing if I could just press Ctrl+F (I was on Windows back then) and find what I’m looking for?"
And then it hit me: that’s what a blog is for 🤦
Blog is searchable, public, and useful to future-you and to other people who are struggling with the same problem.
Benefit #1: you become a better writer
This is probably the most underrated benefit of blogging.
When people think about blogging, they often jump straight to traffic, money, followers, or "personal brand". But one of the biggest gains is much simpler: writing makes you better at writing.
That sounds obvious, but it’s surprising how often people miss it.
Writing is not some side skill. It’s a core skill.
You use it in:
- emails
- documentation
- pull requests
- Slack
- proposals, specs, job applications, and conference CFPs, …
And in remote work especially, your writing often is your first impression.
You may be brilliant, kind, and highly capable. But if your writing is confusing, sloppy, or unclear, people may never realize how good you are.
That may sound harsh, but it’s true.
The good news is that blogging gives you a practical, repeatable way to improve that skill. You write, review, re-write, publish, cringe a little later, improve, and repeat. That cringe is actually a good sign as it means you’ve grown.
If you look back at old posts and feel slightly embarrassed, congratulations: you’ve leveled up! 👏
Benefit #2: you get better at the thing you are teaching
This one is huge.
When you try to explain something clearly, you quickly discover whether you actually understand it or not.
A lot of ideas feel obvious in your head. But the moment you try to write them down in simple language, the gaps show up immediately.
That’s why teaching and blogging are such powerful learning tools.
When you write about a topic, you are forced to:
- organize your thoughts
- check your assumptions
- verify the steps
- simplify the explanation
- think about what a beginner would get stuck on
And that makes you better.
So, even if nobody reads your post (and, in the beginning not many people will) you still win because the process itself improves your thinking.
Benefit #3: your notes start working for you
This is one of my favorite practical reasons to blog.
If you solve a problem once and don’t write it down publicly, chances are good you’ll solve it again later.
That’s annoying.
A blog becomes your external brain.
You fix a weird framework issue? Write it down.
You find a neat JavaScript trick? Write it down.
You discover a backend performance improvement? Write it down.
You keep explaining the same thing to teammates? Definitely write it down. 🙂
Once it’s published, you can send someone a link instead of rewriting the same explanation five times. To me, that sounds like a fantastic return on effort.
Spend 30 minutes or an hour writing a useful post once, and it can save you time for years.
Benefit #4: opportunities show up
This is where people sometimes get the wrong idea, so I want to be clear: you should not start blogging because you expect instant money or fame.
But if you consistently publish useful, high-quality content, opportunities tend to appear.
That may include:
- job opportunities
- freelance work
- course offers
- speaking invitations
- guest posting invitations
- consulting work
- stronger credibility in your niche
To be fair though; this will be a slow burn. But, as said, you’re in the game of getting better at writing and sharing useful things with the world. Anything extra is just an icing on the already great benefits.
Start small. Seriously small.
This part matters a lot, because "start blogging" sounds nice until you actually sit down to do it.
Then suddenly it feels huge.
What should I write about?
How long should it be?
What platform should I use?
What if it’s bad?
What if someone already wrote about it?
What if nobody reads it?
All valid questions. None of them should stop you.
The best advice here is: start small and make it a habit.
You may benefit of this simple (but not easy by any means) target:
write 100 words per day.
Not 2,000.
Not "write the perfect article."
Just 100 words.
That is tiny enough to feel manageable, but meaningful enough to compound.
At the end of 30 days, that’s 3,000 words. That’s about 3 average lenght blog posts.
And most of the time, once you start, you’ll write more than 100 anyway. The hard part is not the volume. It’s getting started.
So, reduce the friction to start. Carve out exact time to work on it daily and make it a habit.
The next you know it, you become a person that writes 100 words daily at 7am.
You do not need a revolutionary topic
This is another common blocker.
A lot of people think:
"I can’t write this. There are already 50 articles about it."
Write it anyway.
It is perfectly okay to write about something that has already been written about.
In fact, that is often the best place to start.
Why?
Because:
- technology changes
- versions change
- tools age
- documentation gets outdated
- beginners still need beginner-friendly explanations
- your explanation may resonate better than someone else’s
Many people specifically search for recent posts because older answers may be obsolete. Others just need the topic explained more clearly, more simply, or from a more beginner-friendly angle.
You don’t need to invent a new topic.
You need to explain something usefully.
Write for beginners, not for your ego
A lot of technical content is frustrating because it skips the exact step the reader needed the most.
It goes like this:
- Do A
- Do B
OK, so far so good, you think… - Then some magic happens and you get to C
Yeah… not helpful.
One of the things I always tried to do in my own posts was to fill in the missing steps. Not because I was some ultimate expert, but because I was often learning the thing myself and still remembered where the confusion was.
That’s powerful.
Beginners make great teachers for other beginners because they still remember what felt unclear five minutes ago.
So don’t try to sound overly smart. Don’t reach for big words just to impress people.
Aim for clarity.
If readers finish your post thinking, "Ohhh, now I get it", you’ve done your job.
Documentation and blogging are cousins
People who value blogging often also value documentation.
Why?
Because both come from the same mindset:
"Let me make this easier for the next person."
If you build something and then document how it works, how to run it, what failed, and what changed, you are saving somebody else hours of pain.
Sometimes that future person is your teammate.
Sometimes it’s a stranger.
Sometimes it’s a future You 🙂
Find your niche, then grow from there
When you’re starting out, it helps to narrow your focus.
Don’t try to write about everything.
Pick a niche.
That could be:
- a language
- a library
- a framework
- a tool
- a workflow
- even one small part inside a framework
The narrower your focus at the beginning, the easier it is for people to understand what you’re about.
Over time, that consistency helps you build recognition and trust.
And later, once you have momentum, you can widen the scope.
But at first, being specific (aka niching down) is the way to go.
Numbers are not the goal
This is another trap worth avoiding.
You publish a post. You refresh analytics. Nobody cares. You feel silly.
That’s normal and expected.
The numbers should not be the main goal.
Because early on, you simply don’t know what people will find valuable.
Sometimes the post you think is brilliant gets ignored.
Sometimes the post you almost didn’t publish becomes the one that keeps bringing in readers for years.
That’s why consistency beats prediction.
Publish useful things. Let the internet decide.
Your job is to keep showing up.
Final thought: just start
If I had to boil this whole post down to one sentence, it would be this:
Start sharing what you know.
That’s it.
Not perfectly.
Not at an expert level.
Not after another six months of preparation.
Start now.
Write small posts.
Explain things simply.
Document what you learn.
Help the next person.
Help future You.
Repeat.
Over time, you’ll find your voice. You’ll write more clearly. You’ll think more clearly. You’ll understand your craft better. And yes, opportunities may come too.
But even before they do, the practice itself is worth it.
So if you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, take this as your little nudge.
Open a blank page.
Write 100 words.
And voilà, your blog has begun.
Full podcast transcript
Nikola: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the DevThink podcast with your hosts, Nikola and Shawn. Today we’ll be talking in more detail about blogging. Should you start your own blog? Should you publish on some other platform? Or should you not even bother with it?
You probably already know my stance on the topic: you should definitely blog. But I’m curious, Shawn—how do you feel about it?
Shawn: Definitely. You should absolutely get out there. I’m going to mix blogging together with podcasting, YouTube videos, and similar forms of sharing content. So you don’t necessarily have to blog in the traditional sense, but if you do one or more of those things, it’s definitely good for you.
It’s good for personal growth, good for your career, and it’s simply a nice thing to do—sharing your experience with others who can use it to get closer to where you are.
Nikola: Indeed. I totally agree.
For example, I always carried a notebook with me. We laughed about that before, especially when you said you also carry notebooks around. At one point I was trying to find something in my notebook and couldn’t locate it. I remember thinking, "Man, wouldn’t it be cool if I could just press Ctrl+F and search this?"
And then it hit me: that’s what a blog is for.
So I started putting programming-related things from my notebooks onto my blog. What I found was that problems I had were also problems that other people had. They came to my blog and found answers there. That got me thinking: maybe I should write more.
Especially when I got deeper into the Ionic Framework, I started blogging a lot more. Not daily, but at least weekly—I’d put out two or three posts.
And it helped unbelievably.
Not only did I become a better writer—and writing is a skill you can use everywhere, even in email—but I also improved simply because I was doing it regularly. If for no other reason, blog so that your writing improves.
With that also came traffic. I’m nowhere near the giant sites, but even something like 20,000 views per month got me somewhere.
By "somewhere," I mean it led to writing for sites like HackHands, which Pluralsight later bought. And in hindsight, that helped lead me to write two books. Not printed books from a traditional publisher, but I can still say I wrote and self-published two books.
So yes—definitely blog.
Because here’s the thing: you can be the best programmer in the world, but if you’re not sharing what you know—through a blog, through forums, through Stack Overflow, through anything—then nobody will know.
Shawn: Exactly. And even if you think you’re the best, you’re probably wrong. You might be the best in your team or company, but until you expose your ideas to the outside world and let them be challenged, you’re missing out.
You may be fantastic, but you can always improve. Maybe there’s one thing you’re doing that was correct five years ago, but there’s a better approach now. When you share publicly, someone can say, "Hey, have you considered doing it this way?" And then you improve.
So this isn’t just altruism. Don’t think of it as "I’m helping the less knowledgeable people." You do it because it benefits others and yourself.
Nikola: Exactly. I have more than 300 posts on my blog now. When I look back at the first few posts, I’m embarrassed by them—and that’s actually a good thing.
The same goes for code. If you look at a project you wrote a year ago and you’re not thinking, "Whoa, why did I do it like that?" then maybe you haven’t progressed as much as you could have.
Blogging is good practice.
And if we’re talking specifically about writing, that skill is massively undervalued. So much of our communication today happens online, often with strangers, and much of it is written. Your ability to express ideas clearly, structure sentences, and communicate professionally matters a lot.
For some people, the only interaction they may ever have with you is through your writing.
Shawn: Right. You could be the nicest and smartest person in the world, but if your writing makes it look like you’ve been hit in the head with bricks every day since childhood, people are not going to take you seriously.
They won’t respect your opinion, and they may assume you don’t know what you’re talking about—even if you do.
So poor writing is a real disadvantage.
Nikola: I laughed at that image because I’m such a visual person, but yes—that’s not a nice picture.
Another good thing about blogging, making videos, or publishing anything useful is that it can lead to opportunities.
If someone Googles you while you’re applying for a job and sees that you clearly know what you’re talking about, that helps. I’ve also been approached by course companies because I published content on certain topics.
So maybe you write a blog post, then record a video, and suddenly you have a course with your name on it in some online store. That looks great on your resume and helps you get accepted to speak at conferences or be taken seriously in a community.
It gives you confidence too. If you know something but never package it into a course, blog post, or video, you may not feel accomplished. Publishing makes the knowledge concrete.
Shawn: Absolutely.
So now the question becomes: how do you actually start?
And really, the answer is simple: it doesn’t matter how you start—just start.
Also, make it a habit. That advice works for reading, writing, exercise—everything.
Try writing 100 words per day. Make that the minimum. Usually you’ll end up writing more, but even if you stop at 100 words, that’s okay. At the end of the month, you’ll have 3,000 words, which is roughly three solid 1,000-word blog posts.
The answer is simple, but not easy: start small.
Nikola: Yes. And to put that into perspective, think about National Novel Writing Month. The goal there is to write a 50,000-word novel in November. That’s about 1,666 words per day.
It may not be a masterpiece, but plenty of people with no special novelist background manage to write a book in one month.
So if that’s possible, then surely writing a blog post is possible too.
A lot of columnists and journalists write around 1,000 words regularly. So writing a blog post a week is absolutely doable.
And it doesn’t even have to be 1,000 words.
If you learn something cool and turn to your coworker and say, "Hey, check this out," that can be a blog post. Instead of sharing it with just one person, you can share it with many.
If you’re a team lead and you discover a useful code review pattern, that’s a blog post. If you find a neat JavaScript DOM trick, a mobile development technique, or a backend performance tweak—that’s a blog post too.
Every one of those things you write in your notebook or save in some folder can become something valuable for others.
I’ve also found myself wanting access to things I wrote down privately and realizing I never published them. So blogging helps you, too.
And one more thing: I enjoy teaching. There have been many times when I’ve explained the same thing to multiple people—coworkers, people at conferences, whoever—and eventually I realize: I should just write this as a post.
Then instead of explaining it again for ten minutes, I can send someone a link in five seconds.
Nikola: Exactly. And let’s be clear: we’re not saying, "Start blogging and you’ll make money right away."
That wasn’t my motivation at all.
But if you keep publishing quality content and give your best effort, opportunities will come. I really believe that.
For example, one way to get your name out there is guest posting on sites that already have an audience. Some bigger sites accept guest posts. You usually write for free, but in return you get exposure to their readers, and if your post is good, some of those readers will come check out your blog too.
Other sites might pay you, but then the content usually belongs there and not on your own blog.
The point is: there are many options if you’re willing to put in the work.
And that reminds me of something else—documentation.
How many developers are going to frown when I say I love writing documentation?
I think a lot of them will be surprised.
But I honestly think blogging helped make documentation enjoyable for me. When I build something, I want to explain how it works so the next person doesn’t have to guess.
I’ve had unpleasant conversations with people who didn’t understand the value of documentation. And honestly, I think a lot of that comes down to being poor writers.
We should probably do a whole separate podcast episode about documentation, but I do think there’s a connection: people who like writing posts often also appreciate writing documentation.
Shawn: Definitely. When you build something you’re proud of, you often want to document it because you want to explain the thinking behind it.
Sometimes people only see the final solution and say, "Why didn’t you do it another way?" But the documentation lets you explain, "Actually, I tried that. It was attempt number two, and it failed for this reason."
That context is incredibly useful.
Sure, there are ways to make money from writing—ads, paid articles, getting paid by the word—but don’t get hung up on that.
If you refuse to write unless you get paid, you probably won’t write enough to get good. And you won’t get paid until you’re good enough. So you almost certainly need to write a lot for free before anyone is willing to pay for it.
At that point, your choices are either to publish your work for free or throw it away.
So why not publish it?
And here’s one more important thing: it is completely okay to write about something that has already been written about many times before.
If you’re new to Rails, Django, Go, React, Bootstrap—whatever—and you want to write about beginner experiences or solving a common problem, do it.
Technology changes. Versions change. Advice ages. People search for more recent answers all the time because they don’t fully trust a post from eight years ago.
Also, your explanation may simply be clearer than someone else’s.
Don’t try to sound smart. Don’t use big words just to impress people. Use simple, accessible language so people understand what you mean.
If your reader walks away thinking, "Oh, now I get it," then you’ve done your job.
Nikola: Exactly. One thing that frustrated me about many tutorials was that they’d go step one, step two, step three—and then suddenly jump over the exact part where the difficult stuff happened.
You’d get something like, "And after twenty minutes, you arrive here."
Wait—what happened in those twenty minutes?!
So what I tried to do was write true beginner-friendly posts. For example, when I was learning AngularJS back in the day, I would literally write step by step what I did and how I solved each problem.
And it turned out a lot of people found that useful, because they were also beginners.
Sure, some of those posts are outdated now, and I may not have the time or energy to update them. But that’s exactly why new people should write new versions now.
Don’t be afraid to publish because you’ve never done it before, or because you’re worried what people will think.
You shouldn’t care what people think—assuming you’re honestly trying to write something helpful and of good quality.
If only one person reads it and benefits from it, that’s already worthwhile.
And numbers should never be the main goal.
For me, especially in the early days, the goal was often simple: "Put this somewhere so I can find it later."
Shawn: Right. And if you write one blog post a week, every week, then five years later you’ll have 52 posts from your first year alone.
Some of those will have much higher traffic than others, and I guarantee they won’t always be the ones you expected.
The ones you think are your best, most timely, most clever posts may not be the ones people value most.
So publish the work. You don’t actually know in advance what others will find useful.
Nikola: Yep. So I think we’ve beaten this horse enough.
The too-long-didn’t-read version is: people, start.
You’ll see quickly that writing a good post takes effort. It requires revisions and care. But as you keep doing it, you’ll also start to find your voice.
That’s important. Over time, you become unique. And that matters because there’s a lot of competition out there, but not every style works for every reader. Maybe your voice will resonate more with some people than someone else’s.
One great piece of advice I got was to find a niche first.
Pick a specific topic—maybe a framework, or even one particular area inside a framework—and write about that. Build your community around that niche.
And no, it won’t happen overnight. There’s no overnight success on this podcast. Sorry, guys.
But what will happen is that you’ll get better.
Not just better at writing, but better at the things you’re teaching, because clearly expressing your thoughts forces you to think more deeply and often research more carefully.
Shawn: Agreed. Totally.
Nikola: Anyway guys, I hope this was useful. And as always—keep progressing.
See you next time.
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