As a longtime and successful tech blogger, I endorse this position.
The tech blog is primarily for personal growth and may also help get you a good reputation.
The personal growth is the important part. The blog gives you practice thinking about things and writing them down. It extends your memory by building an archive of your ideas. And it is fun.
The reputation part may help you attract better job offers.
Several people have suggested writing a book. Having done this, I will say: Do not do it for the money.
The early internet had infinitely less content available than today. It was also populated by technical people that didn’t, and still don’t, have any difficulty in getting a high-paying job.
There’s a really easy way to get high-quality content: pay for it so that people can make a living from it. If you aren’t willing to do that, don’t be surprised when advertising is the only business model.
If one isn't willing to pay for it, the price is obviously too high for the content.
PS: it's not like ads aren't payment. It's just the price to you isn't transparent and only a fraction of it ends up at the blogger compared to a real payment
There are plenty of things that people “aren’t willing to pay for” on an individual level yet are overall beneficial for society at large. That’s why the tragedy of the commons is a concept.
The point is that unless you’re willing to pay people enough money and provide enough job security to create high-quality content, you will inevitably end up with advertising, attention-seeking, and subsidization as the main business models.
True, but if we as society want something like that we can still chose to explicitly pay that.
For instance, Germany and other countries funds public journalism or public infrastructure through tax or obligatory fees.
You will never be able to be willing to pay enough, because there is always someone who provides a little less value, but also wants to earn money that way. And it's not like earning enough money to make a living is enough... our system encourages growth beyond that.
Sure, but that is sort of my point: technical content can afford to be high quality and free because the writer won’t have a difficult time getting work. Most people in other industries are not in the same situation.
I did this with a DIY themed blog a few years ago, not out of any principal but because I had another income stream. Fast forward to today and several similar sites have popped up with content that is the same as mine but re-written to look unique. They are all, of course, heavily monetized.
The moral of this story is that if you don't monetize your content someone else certainly will.
Same here. While my blog is more an infrequent dumping ground for (mostly technical) thoughts, I try to write up new info, things that I can't quite find elsewhere, in hopes others find them useful as well. Years ago, when ads didn't feel quite so smarmy, I had a simple banner on the page and would get an extra $100/mo or so. But then this fell off a cliff and the ads started feeling cheap, and I pulled it all off and now just have things up for free.
Yes, it costs me a bit out of pocket, but it's a useful shingle to hang, a place to dump thoughts, and an easy way to reference them in the future. It's not worth the time it'd take to even make the site pay for itself (~$20/mo).
I long for the days of the pre-internet where everyone agreed writing was worth paying for.
The worst thing the internet had done to society is convince us that writing isn't worth paying for.
The amount of writers (journalists, novelists, etc) who have abandoned the profession these past 30 years is heartbreaking. But just as every newspaper and magazine has learned: the internet means writing is free.
The old internet was full of hobbyists and passionate people who wanted to share their knowledge. There’s nothing wrong with paying for a real news outlet with real journalists, I pay for PBS.
Everyone is trying to make a buck and it’s harder to find passionate blogs that aren’t gaming Google’s SEO to show 100 ads. Even with woodworking or gardening I found everyone wants you to buy their videos, plans, or swag.
The early internet wasn't full of this, it was sparesly populated by it.
You hit the problem on the nail though, most people think like you and will have no problem paying hundreds of dollars in tax or subscriptions to traditional media, while staunchly refusing to pay a dime to independent online writers that they themselves read more and know are of much higher quality.
Yeah but everyone's looking to make a buck because it means they can spend more time on a topic they're so passionate they started a blog on the topic. Don't let money ruin things for you. Just because Ms Green Thumb is selling merch for her blog she started about gardening because she'd really like to be able to quit her job and do gardening full time. Those branded hats shouldn't automatically impugn the passion she has for gardening, it's just this attitude that money ruins everything when it shouldn't. well, not automatically anyway. But she'd rather be gardening than putting up with Tom, her kinda creepy boss at the accounting firm she's at. Going viral and selling merch is her only real way out of that. That or a lottery ticket.
The tech blog is primarily for personal growth and may also help get you a good reputation.
The personal growth is the important part. The blog gives you practice thinking about things and writing them down. It extends your memory by building an archive of your ideas. And it is fun.
The reputation part may help you attract better job offers.
Several people have suggested writing a book. Having done this, I will say: Do not do it for the money.