So, here it is.
A brand new personal (well, two persons) blog in the blogiverse.
And yes, it is currently the year 2020, which means it’s 23 years since blogging became a thing.
It’s funny - I’ve always seen myself as someone wanting to be an early adopter in the latest trends or technologies, often finding myself sitting late at night looking at lists such as “Bill Gates 10 Predictions for Breakthrough Technologies.”
I mean, if you invest your time and money in one of these, surely you will be rewarded in the future when the majority catches on.
Which is why this feels a bit ironic, but I think starting a blog might be the smartest thing for me (and you) to do in 2020.
Here are three big reasons:
- Having a blog helps you develop a stronger personal brand (1+1=3)
- It’s super scalable and very cheap (You have nothing to lose but time)
- It can be a source of passive income (After a while)
Blogging builds a stronger personal brand
“He is one of the tech-blogger-brothers… From Sweden I think? Don’t quote me on that”
- Unknown
Now, being famous most likely sucks and probably shouldn’t be anybody’s goal in life, however having a strong personal brand is just an extension of having a good reputation.
Us humans tend to place things into narratives, and having a cool blog gives the people around you information about their narrative of you. Having a strong personal brand also makes you more employable and might open doors that you didn’t know existed.
Let’s paint a picture
Say you start a blog. You write a few posts (but nobody reads them) and feel pretty good.
One day, you see that there’s a cool tech conference in town. You send the people in charge a link to your cool-looking blog and promise to write a post about it if you can go. Leveraging your blogs (limited) reach and promising a blog post opens many doors to otherwise locked places.
You write the post, and suddenly you have some unique, quality content.
I, for example, used this blog to get interviews with two top angel investors in Sweden. Convincing them to grab a coffee with a broke 25-year old about investing millions of dollars wasn’t easy - But promising some blog coverage (+ plugging their sites) made all the difference.
One cold Thursday morning, a professor at the university you attended 8 years ago reaches out to you. He wants you to come and speak at his current course. He saw your blog on Facebook. You do it, get 200 dollars and plug your blog even more. Before you know it, you have a bit of a brand going on, meaning more opportunities everywhere you look.
Your blog shouldn’t be seen as an end product in itself, but as a powerful tool that you can leverage for many other things, creating viral loops.
1+1=3
It’s super scalable (and very cheap)
The internet has some crazy leverage. Two hours spent writing a blog post can potentially reach tens of millions of people instantly.
Starting a blog is also super cheap. The setup we run here is actually free - we are using Gatsby with Netlify to generate static sites (that can hold up to 100 million views per second). The only thing we pay for is the domain at 20 dollars a year.
Our setup does require some coding though, so if you aren’t at all into all that, I would recommend using Wix. It’s super easy for anyone to understand and get going with their blog. I would use Wix for this site if my brother wasn’t a tech wiz.
The blog being cheap isn’t why you should do it though.
You should do it because it’s scalable.
Let’s take an example: Logo Design
Creating logos for 5 dollars each on fiverr.com is not scalable. You need to spend a fixed amount at time and get a fixed amount back. Even if you up your price to 100 dollars per logo, there are only so many hours in a day for you to work.
Building a tool that generates a logo for the user based on their text input for a fee of 1 dollar is scalable. You spent a fixed amount of time but the potential upside is unlimited. 200,000 logos could be generated with your tool without you spending any more time than if 5 logos were generated.
Creating a personal blog is just like building a logo-generating tool.
I probably spent 3 hours writing this post. And the potential traffic could be 0, or it could be 200k. It’s all the same work for me.
This is also why scalable time investments are scary. You can spend 3 years writing a blog without any returns whatsoever. But with some common sense and knowledge, I think most people can figure it out:
Being a successful content creator is simply doing these things:
- Create quality content (writing/photographing/recording audio/filming)
- Look at the data (Google Analytics)
- Find your best performing piece (and check why it’s performing well)
- Do more of that thing
- Repeat consistently until successful
A source of passive income
Blogging is something I do outside of my full-time job. But I do think I can grow it to be a substantial part of my yearly income.
If you write popular content, there are many legitimate ways of making some money off it.
If you write about the products you use, you could implement affiliate links to the products you recommend, thus getting a small kickback from the company you recommend. The key here is obviously to only recommend things you actually enjoy using and that readers can get value from.
Publishing a blog post about comparing two cameras could, with affiliate links, pay you monthly for the next 3-4 years without you having to put in any more time than that initial time investment.
It’s like putting a tiny snowball into motion and getting on with your life. And the more of these tiny snowballs you start, the bigger the passive income.
That cold beer you will buy one sunny day in June 2025, could be paid for by the three hours you spend tomorrow night writing your first blog post.
Nobody will read your blog until everybody does (nobody really cares)
One thing that held me back for a long time was the question: What will my friends and family think?
The truth is, nobody will read your blog until everybody does. Humans tend to think we are protagonists in the movie that is life. That’s true, but only for our own lives.
So, what will I write about? (And what should you write about?)
I will write about the same things I enjoy discussing with my closest friends. It could be investing, technology, lifestyle, psychology, or learning to be happy. I’m tackling these topics not as any kind of expert, but as a person trying to learn more. My writing style will be anecdotal, following my real life and progress on any of these topics and more.
I hope to see you around
Jacob