I am dedicating this post for the blog software that Hashnode provides. This is a good place but it's not for everyone. I will try not to be Captain Obvious as much as I can, but some things just need to be said. I will be revisiting this post as I gather more content for it because this is after all my current understanding of how Hashnode functions.
Make friends, not numbers
People come and people go, holds true on many different aspects of life.
You know what, let me start with the story of a popular person on social media. He has lots of "friends" on his friends' list and zeroes real ones. That sounds bad, right? For me, it is. Chasing a big number of followers or whatnot can and will influence how and what you write.
You are one step away from writing those generic trash posts that are targeted toward the masses, and in hope that Google will rank your page highly. Even then, you are destined to keep them with those annoying popups and sidebars. It just makes you donate to the AdBlocker right away.
What I like about Hashnode is that it is made for you to make real like-minded friends. It is important to make a personal connection with each new reader because it shows that you do care to help, which will result in that person return to your blog or to contact you on some social media. That friend request will be more valuable.
As for the community around you, you will get a:
trusted member status
the impression that you are there by yourself, open and willing to help
building an email list if you have set one up
warm zone in terms of how likely are they willing to support you with your projects, buying your products/programs, reading your books
You scratch my back, I scratch yours
Reciprocity is what humankind is based on. Its evolutionary fact and you have every right to think that if you provide something to someone, they will return you in some way or other.
Picture 1. Shows two different groups of visitors. The green one is the one that you should build on.
No distractions regards to writing
I want to confess something. I started writing the blog post on my hosting Wordpress domain, but I could not go past 2 posts. Do you know why?
I found lots of distractions all over my blog post. I want to move this div here, change the shadows on the borders there, my footer looks small... They needed to be "fixed". And that took a lot of my time, resulting in two posts and then I quit. It was just too hard to "write" a blog.
Clean and slick design with restrictions on what you can add on your blog space is helping me to write; the very thing why I opened my writing panel in the first place. I get that people come to view the content, and not to be impressed with the layout, but in my head, that was constantly interrupted. This helps a lot.
Write to become a good writer
is the thought that I am getting stuck in my head. Fact: the more you write, the better writer you become. It takes time and practice, and this place helps you overcome one of the hardest things when comes to master something, and that is to start. No more excuses.
You good, you get a promotion
Like in every job, if you do good, you get promoted. With Hashnode, I got Twitter post from them promoting one of my successful posts, and even SitePoint shared my link. To be honest, I am not sure that I would get that from my stand-alone website.
Benefits I got from it:
motivation to write more
a mindset that if you do write quality content, you will get benefit from it
few new subs on my email list
a couple of followers on Hashnode
No Adsense - where is money for me?
I like money as much as any other person, but with all those restrictions on what you can put on the page, how you can actually generate money?
Now that is a good question, which leads us to point of: "Who should write posts on Hashnode?"
Actually, I was inspired to write this section while reading this post on Hashnode. Kumar was telling that he generated money from the Adsense service on his website and he shared some tips on how you can do it too. That sounds fine on paper, but in reality
Google gives you ~1USD per 1000 impressions
which puts you in the mindset (justified one) that you need to make posts and spam the Internet with the links to it. If you are fine with this, you are free to do it of course. If grinding is your thing, go for it. However, here, you have a different approach to that problem. As I have said above, this is the place for developers and that's your main target.
If you have some product or service aimed towards them, it is more likely that they will buy it.
That should make sense, and if you plan to do something like it, this is the place for you, otherwise, good luck.
Experiment with some 3rd party software
Since Hashnode is not monetarily rewarding the writers at the moment, and it is uncertain when they will focus on that problem, you can try something out. Milica from Hashnode team, gave an idea to look up a Brave service.
Readers may choose a monthly contribution amount which is divided among the publisher sites they visit most. As Brave grows, so does your revenue. Here is the best part. Neither the readers nor the publisher needs to do anything different. They just keep surfing and you just keep publishing.
That's it, for now.
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