Show HN: My Technical Blogging book for hackers and founders is now in Beta

http://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging

by acangiano • 15 years ago

80 25 15 years ago

pragprog.com

dscape• 15 years ago

Been looking forward for this book for a while. Exciting stuff. Thanks

acangiano11• 15 years ago

Hi guys,

my book is finally available in beta. About 200 out of 250 pages have been completed, so the book is useful right now.

It covers pretty much anything you’d realistically need to know to run a successful technical blog, whether you are a developer or a business guy. It can even be useful to non-technical people, but I wrote it specifically with hacker and founder types in mind.

Early reviewers have provided great feedback and some very encouraging praise. After reading an early draft, Derek Sivers had this to say about the book:

"My career got a huge boost when I got serious about blogging, two years ago. So I'm in absolute awe at this amazing book, going above and beyond the best advice I've ever heard on the subject. I wish I would have read this two years ago, as I had to learn this the hard way. Honestly, this book has got me inspired to get back to writing more."

I honestly believe that this book can help many fellow HNers achieve their goals, whether that goal is to further your career, promote your startup, or simply generate some side income (mine varies between $2,000-$6,000 per month).

If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them.

jgrahamc2• 15 years ago

That's quite a bit more than 'side income'. How many page views are you getting? What ad systems etc.?

acangiano11• 15 years ago

I don't get a huge deal of pageviews (on average), but I squeeze every dollar out of those I do get. Combining my handful of major blogs, I'd say about 100,000-200,000 per month.

In the book I explain in detail how I go about monetizing blogs and what exactly I do to maximize each revenue stream. However, in short: Amazon Associates, other affiliate offers, sponsorships, Ad Networks, AdSense. In that order.

silverbax88• 15 years ago

I love how you are breaking this down and appreciate sharing the information.

tjr• 15 years ago

Any advice on deciding when to spin content off into its own separate blog (e.g., programmingzen.com) rather than putting that content on your personal blog?

EDIT: bought a copy; looks like this is addressed in the first chapter. Thanks!

acangiano11• 15 years ago

In the book, I address the issue right away when discussing domain names and niche vs general topic blogs.

It really depends on what you're trying to achieve. Generally speaking, if you're being strategic about it, it's better not to mix professional and personal posts. This is because a person who's interested in your insight on, say, Kernel hacking, will probably not care too much about posts pertaining to your passion for bikes.

So, in order not to betray your readers' expectations, I would advice starting a dedicated professional blog as soon as possible. Or vice versa, keep the existing blog for professional purposes, and then create a personal one.

Regarding the domain name itself, the most logical choice in the example above would be something akin to kernelhacking.com, but once again it's a matter of what you are trying to accomplish.

If your main goal is to promote yourself and your name in the industry, land consulting gigs, or attract prospective employers who might be interested in you... simply going with namelastname.com is not a bad idea.

EDIT: Just saw your EDIT. :)

mariusbutuc• 15 years ago

Disclaimer: Antonio is my colleague, so I had a chance to review most of it in advance.

In my opinion, even if you consider that your blogging skills have passed intermediate level, this book brings plenty of useful information, examples and ideas to inspire your blogging effort. Only wish I have read it before starting my own blogs.

skeptical• 15 years ago

You can call me narrow-minded, but such books are based on the premise that the blog juice is already there but it just needs to be squeezed the right way. While I don't doubt that the knowledge exposed in this book is useful, one should be aware that we're talking about a limited fringe of improvement over the real value of a blog: it's content.

There are many ways to squeeze an orange, if you want to get yourself a fine glass of juice, you're better of finding a good juicy orange instead of learning the ultimate squeezing technique. Just my two cents.

acangiano11• 15 years ago

I understand your concern, but if you read the table of contents, you'll see that this is a complete guide that starts from scratch. It certainly helps you find "a good juicy orange", and discusses what kind of content you should write and how to present it (before proceeding to promote, monetizing, etc, it).

typicalrunt• 15 years ago

I have wanted to hone my writing skill, but I rarely have anything to write about. It just doesn't come to the fore-front of my thoughts for me to sit down and write a 200 or 1000 word blog post. I'm very technical and also a generalist, so I feel like I should have something to write, but the words (or, maybe muse?) escape me.

Does your book talk about how to get over this roadblock?

acangiano11• 15 years ago

Absolutely. In particular, it's addressed in the following chapters:

* In Chapter 1 and 2 when you plan your blog, I help you decide on the kind of blog you want to run, including how to pick between a niche or more generalized blog. Next, you don't just pick a topic a random, but instead do an exercise that helps you figure out if you have enough interest in the topic and plenty of things to say on it. We also use a bunch of free tools to estimate the size of your potential audience, so you don't corner yourself into a niche that is too narrow (unless you intentionally want to do so).

* Chapter 5 gives you plenty of ideas on the kind of content you can create, how to get inspired, and what tends to work well for technical audiences (among other topics such as developing your own voice, writing catchy headlines that are not misleading, and so on).

* Chapter 6 is called "Producing Content Regularly" and it's also relevant to the issue you raise. In particular, when it comes to surviving writer's block and contending with the challenge of coming up with new posts regularly.

stankal• 15 years ago

One of the issues I've been struggling with is dedicating the time for writing a blog. An entrepreneurs we offer have to: code, test, manage other devs, provide customer support, design features, market, manage business, etc. Everytime I think about starting a blog, and I do think it's very valuable, I am discouraged as I know that some of the other areas of the business will likely suffer. Any advice or insight on now to add blogging to the todo list?

acangiano11• 15 years ago

I knew this would be a common issue, so I specifically wrote the book under the assumption that busy professionals would read it. I also dedicated a chapter to the issue of producing content on a regular basis.

Your question is covered amply within the book, but the gist of it is that you need to take the following steps.

Step 1: Have the right mindset. Blogging is not optional for your business. Inbound marketing is an extremely cost effective tool to help you promote your business. To ignore it is to to leave money on the table - and potentially a lot of it at that. Blogging, for your startup, is a marketing activity.

Step 2: Schedule it. Do you code just when you want? Do you answer support emails whenever the mood strikes? No. So if blogging is a serious component of your business, you need to schedule time for it. OK, you're busy, we all are, but can you spare one or two hours a week? Set that time in your calendar. That allocation is sufficient to publish at least one post per week.

Step 3: Write it. You just had a pop up appear from your online calendar that says "Write a post titled 'How Coach to 5K changed my life'". Good. Now sit down and start writing for an hour in order to complete the post. The more frequently you do it, the faster you'll become. The book suggests several techniques for focusing (including the Pomodoro Technique), and includes a large list of suggestions for dealing with writer's block.

Step 4: Promote it. Use an hour, usually much less, which you booked ahead of time, to promote your article. I dedicated Part 3 of the book to this topic. Just follow the steps, it's all written down and ready for you to avail of.

Other parts of the book will guide you in terms of strategic decisions, and the chapter 11 (which is in progress at the moment) is going to be solely dedicated to aiding startups in promoting their own products.

Your concern is valid for sure, but I believe my book will squash it out and put your mind at ease well before you finish reading it.

przemoc2• 15 years ago

Haven't started real techblogging yet, but I may one day, so PDF for future reading has been already bought. I only skimmed it a bit and didn't find answer to one problem that is bothering me.

What you think about self-promoting vs sharing overlapping issue when same channels are used? Putting buttons allowing reader to link your text on reddit, HN, etc. seems redundant and may even lead to duplicated entries there, which is bad. So should these buttons link to entries author already submitted herself/himself? (Twitter is out of question, as it has a bit different distribution model.)

Advantages of direct linking to particular reddit/HN/etc. entries are pretty obvious and I am somehow amazed not seeing this in the wild. Are there any serious downsides of such solution? Question could be rephrased to: how often old stuff is rediscovered (i.e. linked for the second or more time) on reddit/HN? If it's extremely rare case, then common (at least nowadays) sharing buttons are rather useless.

acangiano11• 15 years ago

In the beginning, before your site is established, promoting it yourself is particularly important. Things change once your site becomes quite popular. At that point the social/sharing buttons will help you get more votes for stories you’ve submitted, and you'll see the occasional submission of older articles by your visitors.

It's mostly a number game.

Even if your CTR (Click-Through Rate) for those buttons is very low, you'll get several clicks if you receive thousands of visits. So they are generally worth having.

Just be careful, as I caution in the book, too many buttons dilute your call to action message and lead to a lower CTR.

przemoc2• 15 years ago

Maybe I didn't write it clearly enough, but you missed my point.

Sharing/social buttons are nowadays used for submitting stories. And if resubmitting old stories by visitors is not happening often (+), then it's pretty stupid. Why? If I'm already submitting my posts myself to social sites, these buttons should point to already created there entries. Even by only assuming that votes are the main concern in such sites, it's easy to tell that having "splitted" entries instead of the main single one is purely wrong. But crucial benefit here is social consolidation, so your visitors can easily check reddit or HN comments, if there are any.

And I believe my idea is really good, yet I don't understand why people go with mostly useless submitting buttons requiring additional work of the precious visitors. I also don't believe I could be the first one with such simple yet efficient solution.

(+) It's kind of the question here, I don't know whether there are any statistics about it.

Show HN: My Technical Blogging book for hackers and founders is now in Beta

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