Hello. This is Alejandro (Alex). And this is my very first post at Tealfeed. I'm a very curious person and I love technology: software development, electronics, gadgets, videogames... I really enjoy sharing my knowledge with others so blogging is a great opportunity to reach more people.

Why to start blog in the first place?

A blog is a great tool to document processes and thoughts on a given topic. There are other benefits, as far as others have experienced. You learn more when you teach, you become a better communicator, and you can keep you post for future reference so you only do research once. It has happed to me many times I need to recall a procedure (for example, Linux commands) and need to look for the information or tutorials again.

Do you need to know how to install and use a program? Is your computer damaged and need to take files from your hard drive? Need advice on how to implement a file backup strategy? It's on my blog!

There are other formats like videos, podcasts and infographics. Though writting is the most suitable for me at this moment. The thing is... I've been delaying writting for a long time.

Back in that time, the most popular options were Blogger and Wordpress. I had read everything I could about blogging: how to choose a domain name, SEO strategies, personal branding, hosting, servers, where to get templates and widgets, newsletters, and so on. I gave self hosted WordPress a try and got stuck because of analysis paralysis.

The free hosting providers were very limited (GitHub pages didn't exist yet). My website didn't look exactly as I wanted. I was afraid to waste a lot of money on hosting and themes because I wasn't sure if could write blog posts often.

Later I got to know about Medium. This time I got really close to start blogging. The clean interface and reading focused format appealed to me very much. Also, I liked how great the posts look without distracting widgets and ads so I started to have a better idea how I wanted my blog to look. I almost jumped in when Free Code Camp anounced its move to Medium.

Still, there were some small details I didn't like. For example, linking a custom domain wasn't straightforward (you had to create a publication and write an email), the ugly URL format, and the Medium banners if you didn't have an account or didn't sign in. Eventually, Medium became a paywall and Free Code Camp anounced moved off. I felt relieved I didn't start there.

A shift in writting and blogging

Another approach began to become popular: static and serverless websites. One thing I liked a lot is that I wouldn't have to worry about maintaining a server, updates, databases or plugin vulnerabilities. Websites without administration dashboards or databases to attack are very secure.

Yet again, I had to take a decision from a range of choices. Which site generator to use or whether I would include a search engine and a comment system. I was often reading articles about Netlify, Algolia, Disqus, AWS Lambda, MailChimp, Gatsby, Markdown, Jekyll, you name it.

During these years I've had so many questions about blogging that I spent all the effort reading recommendations instead of actually blogging. I worried too much that if used third party platforms I wouldn't own the content. After all this time, I came into a great conclusion: just start writting.

Leave the technical details and advanced features for later when you gain more experience. You'll be stuck as I did if you try to craft the perfect blog. That is, the perfect theme, the perfect font, the perfect layout, the most beautiful newsletter, the perfect keywords. It's just too much to get it right since the very beginning. Just focus on enjoying the writting part.

Last year, I wrote a couple of articles on LinkedIn, without giving much thought, no previous draft or outline, I just felt I wanted to. I was really content with the result, I got views and comments, and much important, I enjoyed the process.

Conclusion

You might not need a blog on your own domain to start. I’ve seen people sharing great pices of advice and content on social media and online platforms. That’s how I discovered I liked writting which is the first step in the process. Of course, a personal domain has its perks if you plan to establish a personal brand.

The point is, if you want to reach people from the beginning I suggest choosing a publishing platform with integrated communities. For tech bloggers, examples are: Hashnode, Dev.to, Hackernoon. For general content, Tealfeed and Medium.

I do recommend keeping backups of your posts if you host your articles on third party platforms. And reading the terms of service. You want to make sure you keep the authorship and the content is always yours.

You can have the best of both worlds: a blog on your own domain and cross-post to communities, then share on social media. For SEO, make sure the platform allows you to set canonical URLs, to indicate your domain as source.

I hope this post had help you to alleviate the struggle on getting started.