[emrah]

> “why don’t most people I meet have personal websites?”

The bigger question for me is, if it was dead simple and all they had to do was -say- pay $10/mo, would most people actually choose to have a personal website?

I think the issue comes down to most people not seeing enough value to have a personal site to pay for it. And if they don't want to pay, the free DIY options are either a site like Medium or the technical hurdles they have to jump through to get it up and running manually

[appplication]

I wouldn’t have one even if it was dead simple and free (or honestly even paid). I just have too much on my plate, and I struggle to see what value it could bring. Let’s say I If I had a personal website, then what? I have to create content for it on some consistent cadence, which feels like a job. And then either no one reads it, which would feel both pointless and demoralizing, or I have to actively market it to try to get people to read it, which sounds even more depressing.

I’m sure this is where people chime in with their survivorship bias (“you’d be surprised how many people would read your site”) or wildly different value sets (“even if no one reads it, it can help you grow!”). But some of us just want to work as little as possible, and then go home and play with our dogs, or go for a run, or binge watch Netflix, or read a book, or pop an edible and make some music, or pen overly grumpy comments on HN. A personal website doesn’t just bring me no value, I’d go so far to say it would bring negative value.

[cxr]

> Let’s say I If I had a personal website, then what? I have to create content for it on some consistent cadence, which feels like a job.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Having a personal site doesn't have to be any more complicated than minting (ideally permanent) URLs for stuff you're already creating—a namespace that third parties don't control. I'd argue that if you're trying to "create content for it", then you're already off on the wrong foot. This is another reason why I strenuously argue against the Smol Web clan who loudly advocate for personal websites as a sui generis medium[1] for (a specific, technofetishistic type of) personal expression—because people in turn respond to it the way you are here, and then their conception of a personal website is compromised exactly like this: that it's something that they don't actually want.

You probably created some kind of document (or other artifact) for distribution to people within your sphere at some point in the last week or three. Why shouldn't it be citeable by URL? That's what TBL's original vision of the Web was really about—not the false/misplaced nostalgia for Geocities-style gewgaws that insist upon themselves and motivates so much of what comes to the fore and dominates these conversations when the subject of personal websites comes up.

1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38682884>

[JohnFen]

> If I had a personal website, then what? I have to create content for it on some consistent cadence, which feels like a job

Why would you have to do this? You could just update it if/when you feel like updating it.

I've had a personal website for decades, and I've always just updated it when I had something I wanted to share (code, usually). I don't bother with artificially trying to "create content" for it at all, let along with any sort of regular cadence.

My website is collection of reference material and software, not a blog (even though it contains actual blog-like articles and creative writings). Since my goal for it is not to maximize audience, things like update cadence are irrelevant.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

+1. I have a personal site I update every couple years. Just has some contact info and links to my other stuff on the big sites. Not too dissimilar from "linktree" I guess.

But it serves some other value too. I had a subdomain point to my home PC so my friends could connect for gaming. And my hg repo on there. And a DB I sometimes use because I'm lazy and don't want to run one locally. Worth the $5/mo