Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?
Well, here is my take on this topic, as a non-blogger(iow, consumer of sorts). Please excuse this not-that-well-written rant in advance.<p>What do people - in my opinion -  search for:<p>#1 Help &amp; advice on a specific topic (like, how to disassemble a vw golf 1.3 &#x27;87 petrol engine)<p>#2 Specific information (list of vw engines)<p>#9 Opinions (compatible with their views &#x2F; controversial, ideally from people they like or hate, but most importantly, already know &gt;&gt; my-favorite-auto-blog : why vw golf I was the best golf ever manufactured || that-fiat-loving-morron : why vw golf I should be banned from the streets)<p>#999 Random opinions from people they never heard of (some-guy-on-the-internet : 10 best things about the vw golf I generation || some-other-random-guy : 10 most beutiful wordpress themes of 2017)<p>--<p>When you start your blog, you are that random person. I red many great, well researched, well written articles but honestly, I have no idea where I found them nor by whom they were written. Two reasons why:<p>a) Subscribing to someone I don&#x27;t know is a risk I&#x27;m unwilling to take. I hate spam as much as averyone else. I don&#x27;t know what you&#x27;ll do with my email address. I don&#x27;t want to get notifications about your new cat. I don&#x27;t want to participate in any of your surveys and I don&#x27;t want to help you make your blog better. Sorry, a day has only 24h, every minute wasted is a minute of your life you _won&#x27;t_ get back.<p>b) I have no easy way to find out if your blog is any good in the first place.<p>The problem with blogs as a format(incl. video blogs) is that you effectively surrended all the contextual synapses your information is generating - to a search engine. Context has sometimes more value than the actual information. If I red your well-written article about linux kernel hardening, I _do_ want to know your opinion about different security subsystems for example. But what does your blog provide to make this task easier - a calendar? That primitive, useless junk called a &quot;tag cloud&quot;? A href link to an &quot;older&quot; post? Most of you don&#x27;t even include a list of the most popular or recent articles. You want us - consumers - in this day an age, to actually click through some calendars on your blog an spend - no, waste - our valuable time to search for contextualy related topics? Who else is better at deciding about the context of your information than you - the bloke who is writing it? Can&#x27;t you be a little more creative and write a system that would actually present all the information you have published since 1985 in a natural, contextual way?<p>People produce valuable content daily, but they somehow forgot to care about the context. If your blog is unable to set your article into a braoder body of knowledge and relies solely on a search engine&#x2F;social media, well, then you get what you ordered. Good luck paying for all kinds of trickery to get your page visits.