DONN FELKER

Lessons Learned From the Software Industry

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Get Known or Get None

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You’re probably interested in making some additional money on the side.

Most likely, if you’re reading this you’re also a software developer.

 

How can you make an additional $500, $1,000, or even $10,000 more on the side?

Freelance and/or consulting work.

You can do this on the side while you work your current job.

I did it for about 10 years before going full-time as a software development consultant.

Ok, I know, you already know this probably …

Let’s get to the good stuff …

To get that extra $$$ you’re going to need to get some clients.

The #1 thing I get asked other than how much should I charge is …

“I don’t know where to get clients.”

I get this question all the time.

The first thing I do is perform a search for that person’s name on Google. Then I see what comes up …

… or unfortunately and more often …

… what DOESN’T come up.

Meaning …

There’s no search result other than a LinkedIn profile (with no posts) or maybe a Twitter handle (also with no posts).

There’s problem #1.

No one knows who you are or what you can do.

Here’s the thing…

I’m doing what everyone else is going to do when they hear your name – I’m going to Google you.

Let us assume I’m talking to Raveesh (if your name is Raveesh, this is not meant to be directed to you, this is just an example)…

Raveesh is an Android Developer who’s looking to do some freelance work on the side.

He can’t find clients.

When someone hears that Raveesh is a good mobile developer, the first thing they’re likely going to do is Google his name.

If nothing comes back … that’s not good.

Why?

As a business owner, who is going to spend money on your services I want to make sure you know what you’re doing. When there are no search results for you or what you’ve done … that’s a bit of a red flag.

Let us flip that on its head.

Let’s assume I Googled Raveeh’s name, and saw several results:

  • An Active Twitter Handle
  • A fully fleshed out LinkedIn Profile with posts
  • Many blog articles
  • A GitHub repository with some sample code
  • Maybe a video online of him explaining how to do something in Android/etc.

As a business owner or even hiring manager, this is going to give me a much warmer feel towards Raveesh.

Why?

He has proven that he has some clout in the field.

While he may not be the most senior or best developer in his field, this clout is a form of social insurance that he is in fact what he says he is – an Android developer.

Who would you rather hire?

The person with no online presence or the person with an active online presence?

The person with an online presence.

When I’m hiring for a software developer I want to see what they know what there doing. This could be from a GitHub profile, their blog, videos, etc. When I see this my confidence in the individual goes WAY UP. I want to work with a person like that.

I’m not the only one that feels this way. Almost all business owners act this way.

If you don’t have any online presence, you’re not going to get that much response from prospects.

In other words …

Get known, or get none.

If people know what you can do and are aware of it your chances of finding work go up astronomically.

If no one knows you or knows what you can do, how or why would they reach out to you for freelancing?

Makes sense, right?

What do you do if you don’t have any online presence?

Just start. Share what you know in any way possible.

  • Write a blog about something you learned.
  • Record a video showing how you fixed/implemented something
  • Reach out to open source library and fix a bug or offer to write documentation
  • Post on social about what you’re doing with your respective technology

In short – put yourself out there.

When you do this it opens the doors of serendipity that were previously closed.

Do this long enough and clients will start coming to you without you having to do any outreach.

The choice is yours …

So… are you going to “Get known” .. or… “Get none”?

I think the answer is simple. 🙂

If you enjoyed this, you’ll likely enjoy my YouTube channel as well. On my channel, I teach software developers how to start, survive and thrive in freelancing and consulting. Check it out here.

Photo by Drew Beamer

What Gets Measured, Gets Managed

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I used to just fly by the seat of my pants on everything. If I felt OK about something, then all good. If it felt bad, then time to look into it. I bet you have done the same thing many times.

​You manage a ton of things in your life …​

Yourself, your family, your finances, your business, your pets, your projects at work, etc.

Face it, there’s a lot going on.​

How do you know how well you’re doing in each one of these areas?

Like most people you probably follow you “gut feeling”.

  • How do you feel about X?
  • How do you feel about Y?
  • Are you doing good?
  • How’s your gut feel?
  • Does your intuition tell you everything is Ok?

Do you have a feeling inside of you knowing that you could do better?

​I know I have.​

I suspect that the latter half is where you fall – you could do better at X, Y, or Z.

But really… deep down … you know that you’re doing “Ok”, but you’re not really sure how well you’re doing and you know that you could probably do a lot better.

This is where the phrase …

What gets measured, gets managed.

… comes into play.​

In other words, when we keep track of something with measurable statistics we can then manage how well we’re doing with that one thing.

 

What types of things could be measured?

In business, this might be your MRR (monthly recurring revenue) or your Customer Churn (how many people are leaving) or it could simply be your site visitors or session length on your site.​

If you’re like me, and you write, you may want to increase the speed in which you type. In that case, you may decide to keep track of how many words you type per minute or hour. So you might keep that in a spreadsheet so you can calculate how fast you move.

One of the two most popular things in the world that get measured is body weight and money.

You wake up and drag your feet to the bathroom. Look in the mirror and pat your stomach. You then wonder how much you weigh while thinking:

“Hmm, this doesn’t look right. I wonder how much I weigh?”

You hop on the scale.

You’re now ‘measuring’.

You look at your bank account or a budgeting app and ask “How much money do I have”?

You’re ‘measuring’ again.​

What happens to these things when you constantly measure them?​

You manage them.

If you measure your weight, and you realize that you’re weighing more than normal, you’re going to start managing it. You will probably change what you eat, exercise more, etc.

That might lead you to measure other things, like caloric intake. Before you know it you’re on the AppStore looking up a calorie tracker and installing it on our phone so you can start “measuring” the food that you eat.​

Why? So you can manage it.

Why? So you can manage your weight.​

As you can see …

What gets measured, gets managed.

The same principle applies to finances.​

You look at your bank account and think:

“Where did all the money go?” … or something similar.

It’s at that point when you start tracking your spending. You’re measuring again.

You install a budgeting app like YNAB or Mint and start tracking your expenses, how much you spend, and then you can see where all of your money is going.

You’re now “managing” your finances.​

What gets measured, gets managed.​

When you don’t measure something, you’ll find it much harder to manage it.

For example, do you manage how many miles/km’s per gallon/liter your vehicle gets?

You probably don’t.

Some people do. Some people really want to know their fuel mileage.

Me though? I don’t care. Maybe you don’t either, who knows.

However, if for some reason you noticed that you were filling up your car with fuel more often you’d probably ask yourself “Why?” You’d then try to measure what’s going on.

Are you driving more? Are you harder on the gas?

If nothing has changed, you’ll then want to start measuring to figure out what’s going on.

You’ll then start to measure, so you can manage.

​

Measure What you Want to Manage

Anytime anything in your life feels completely out of control or even marginally out of control … well …

​This is a good time to start measuring some things.​

It’s also a good time to measure things if you just want to get a better handle on them too.​

Things I measure so I can manage them …

I measure the following things in my personal life:

  • Daily Sleep Time and Patterns (using this app)
  • Every Single Workout (including walks)
  • Water intake (I drink a minimum of a gallon a day)
  • Moods (using a mood tracker)
  • Finances (using YNAB)
  • Blood Levels (blood panels twice a year starting this year)
  • The time I meditate per day and aggregate (using a timer app)
  • Words I write per timed session (as I’m writing this doing this using Scrivener)
  • Kids School Assignments (using Google Classroom)
  • My kids’ device screen time (via ScreenTime on iOS and Family Management on PS4)​

In my business life, I keep track of other things like:

  • Number of tickets completed (Jira)
  • Things to be done (Jira)
  • MRR/Churn/Active users/MAU/etc (using Baremetrics)
  • Hours worked (using Harvest)
  • etc.

All of these things are measured and due to that all of them are getting managed in one way or another.

I also have periodic management tools that are used on occasion.

For example, during the coronavirus pandemic, many doctors have started treating patients over “telemedicine” (video chat). I have a digital thermometer as well as a pulse oximeter. I can now give the doctors the measurements that they need to help them make more informed decisions to manage my children’s health.

What gets measured, gets managed.​

When we don’t measure, we don’t manage.​

How to measure creative endeavors

Measuring is simple for things like caloric intake and finances. It’s very simple. The inputs are easy to follow, the outputs are easy to see and you can adjust.

With creative endeavors, it’s much different. You have to track things differently and each creative endeavor requires a different method.

I’ll cover two examples here:

  • Measuring Writing
  • Measuring Coding/Side Hustle​

 

Measuring Writing

For example, with writing, I realized over time that the biggest challenge is just getting the initial draft done. After that it’s editing, and cleaning it up. I find that editing takes more time because I’m reorganizing my thoughts, but at least the thoughts are down. I can then just tweak and edit the things that area already there.

However, that was a dilemma.

How can I measure this so I can improve it (manage it)?

Just introspecting itself is a form of measuring. Upon doing so I determined that my problem was that I was editing the same time I was typing. Fixing spelling mistakes is ok, but I’d re-write the same paragraph 5-10 times before I moved not o the next one.​

That was a problem. My solution was to just write and edit later.

I still needed something to focus on, so I decided to focus on how many “Words Per Hour” I was writing.​

A higher Words Per Hour (WPH) rate does not indicate that what I’m writing will be good, but it does provide me a metric that I can manage. I picked this up from this book — “How to Write 5,000 Words Per Hour”

For example, if I start editing while I’m writing my WPH will plummet. Why? I’m rewriting the same thing over and over and over and not creating new content.

When I don’t edit when I write my WPH skyrockets. At this time of writing, I’m averaging about 3,500 – 4,000 words per hour. Meaning that if I write for an hour at this pace I’ll put down 3,500 to 4,000 words per hour. My goal is to get to 5,000 WPH.

Again, this doesn’t mean that this content will be good. However, my goal is to get the content on paper (to be honest, a digital document of some sort – I use Scrivener or Google Docs) and then edit later.

Since measuring this on a day to day basis I’ve written nearly 25,000 words in the last couple of weeks. I’m averaging about 1500-2500 words a day. An average business book ranges anywhere from 40,000 – 60,000 words.

Yes, I know, not all of the words will be used for the book (in fact, many will be cut out during editing), but this goes to show, that measuring something does help you manage it. Prior to trying to improve my WPH, I was barely getting out a blog post every few months and I’d be lucky if that had 1000 words in it.

Writing is one thing … but say you want to measure something like coding for a new side project you’re doing. How do you measure that?

How to Measure Side Hustles … even if you’re bad at it

Many times we want to develop something or be creative. This could be a side project that requires a software engineer to do some coding. It could require a creative person who is an artist to create more art or write.

The first thing you have to identify is what you want to improve. With writing, I wanted to improve the aspect of getting my first draft done. That means getting the words onto a document. That boiled down to WPH.​

For a creative project such as art, you might want to be able to finish a painting faster. So you need a way to measure how much of the painting is complete.

This could be getting the base layer down first, then the outline.​

Maybe that takes you a long time.

You measure it and want to improve the speed at which you do it.

Perhaps you want to increase the number of sketches you get done in an hour because that’s how you generate ideas for the final pairing that you want to do. You don’t care how long the painting takes, but you do want to improve the idea generation phase.

You have to find what you want to improve first. If you don’t know, then you’ll need to dig in and ask yourself some higher-level questions like:

  • Why do I want to improve this?
  • What does this mean to me?
  • Why is this important?

Keep asking Why.

You can follow the “5 Why’s” method.​

Keep asking yourself “Why”, 5 times until you get to the root why which usually happens around the 5^th^ time you ask the “Why” question.

Let me give you an example:

If I want to improve the idea generation portion of my art projects, in other words, I want to be able to generate ideas faster so I can then decide what to paint more efficiently, then I would ask myself this …

  • Why does creating ideas faster matter?
  • Why does deciding what to paint sooner matter?
  • Why does focusing on canvas matter more than sketches?
  • Why do art shows matter?
  • Why does it matter to get your name out there in the public as an artist?

This is a completely made up, hypothetical example of the five why’s, and you could go even deeper by asking “more why’s”, but now you get the point.

It drives home the point of why you are doing something. It gets to the root cause, the underlying reason you’re doing what you’re doing.

The root cause doesn’t have to be financial reward, fame, or anything like that. It can simply be a personal goal. The goal is to simply identify the root cause so you can see if it’s worth measuring.

One last tip…

If you want to start managing your goals with a common framework, you can use the S.M.A.R.T. goal framework.

A S.M.A.R.T. goal is …

  • Specific (can’t be general, has to
  • Measurable (has to be a way to measure it)
  • Achievable (something you can actually do in the given time frame)
  • Relevant (to your mission in life/big goals)
  • Time-bound (has to have a period when it ends)

If a goal fits within the S.M.A.R.T. framework and you manage it (track it in regard to your time but achievable goal) there is a good chance you’ll get it done.

The Final Word

The next time you find yourself at a crossroads or wondering how or why something is or is not happening — ask yourself if there is something you can measure.​

If so, start measuring it.​

It will be a pain at first, but after a while, it becomes a habit and the data you get out of it will help you make more informed decisions so that you can improve you life in any number of ways.

If you can measure it, you’ll manage it.

 

Photo by Miguel A. Amutio on Unsplash

You Are Not Your Creations

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You Are Not Your Creations

He said “Ok, we don’t need that feature anymore, you can delete it.”

I had just built the feature two months ago. I spent nearly 2 months building it. I had poured all of my heart into building this feature. It was a masterpiece.

Or so I thought …​

Wait … now I’m supposed to delete it? What?

Why?

To be honest, I didn’t know at the time.

.. but I do know one thing though, it pissed me off. It felt like a gut punch.

This happened around 2011 when I was working for Groupon.

After thinking about it for an hour or so I decided to approach the product owner who told me to delete the feature and ask him why. It went something like this:

“Why would we delete this perfectly good feature? The feature great, there are no bugs, it was really technically challenging and I implemented in a way that was very elegant. It seems silly to throw it away, we just shipped it less than a month ago. Why would we do that?”

The product manager looked at me, lifted his chin and then dropped it down towards his chest like he understood the problem, slowly nodding in partial agreement, lips tightly pressed together …

He then explained to me that the feature that I had built was a new experiment that Groupon wanted to try. We tried, it, the customers did not respond to it as well as another flow.

In short, we had two features that did the same thing and mine was not the best for the business.

It was then I realized that I was emotionally attached to my work, and I should not have been.​

How did we know my feature didn’t do well?

We A/B tested the two features against each other.

Again, my feature didn’t do that well in regards to conversions vs a similar feature that did the same thing.​

Not because my code was bad.

Not because my code was wrong.

Not because anything I had done.

We thought the customers would prefer this new experience.

We were wrong.​

Therefore, my feature was no longer needed.

I eventually deleted the code. However, I do keep a repository of code snippets around (I use Quiver) just in case I want to do something like that again. In the end though, the code was deleted from the app.

​

Recognizing that you are not your creations …

Once I understood that I was too emotionally attached to my creation it ended up being a defining moment of my career.

It was then I understood that I should remove emotional attachment to the things I create.

In this case, the code was a tool.

We use tools to build (and repair) things.

The thing I built did not perform its job. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t good, it just wasn’t as profitable as another very similar thing we had already built.

In software, things change. They have to.​

We make assumptions about what we think the users will want, but the only real way to know for sure is to test them. We do that with A/B testing frameworks, watching conversions, funnel drop off rates, watching revenue, sign ups, etc. Its all metrics.​

Remember … “What Gets Measured, Gets Managed” ….

A Mindset Shift

One thing that helped me move on from this emotional attachment is to realize everything we’re creating (especially in software) is temporary. Sure, you might create a cabinet or some art or something in the physical world, but even that is temporary.​

If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. – Epictetus

In other words, the thing we’re grown an attachment to might can be gone at any second. If we assume its temporary, then we enjoy it right now, for what it is.

The same thing is happening with my code.

The same thing can happen to your creation, your art, your design, your writing, etc. It can leave or vanish at any time.

Very similarly, the same thing happened when Viktor Frankl had his manuscript taken from him when he entered the Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II.

It was his life work … all taken from him. He let go of that attachment, focused on what was in front of him, and then made that his purpose at the time. Later, after he was free, he ended up re-writing the book which eventually became “A Mans Search for Meaning” (I highly recommend reading it).

Where am I going with this?

Now, when I create something I don’t get attached to it.

In fact, I find solace in deleting more that I create.​

Why do I find enjoyment in deleting over creating?

Because it means that I’m simplifying.

Think about it …

Remember the last time you cleaned your desk?

Remember how good that felt? Look at all the open desk space in front of you.

You probably felt like you could breath, you could stretch out. Nothing was encumbering you anymore. No more distractions. No more “stuff” everywhere.

What you did was delete the stuff from your desk. Sure, you may have just put it back where it belonged, organized, etc, but you get the point.

Creation can be and should be very enthralling and captivating for you. In fact, I find great joy in creating.

However, when I’m done I let it go.

I’m happy about what I created, but then done with it and onto the next thing.​

It is what it is.​

Once you can let go of your emotional attachments to your creations that you’ll find you’re free of anything that happens to them … and that is a freeing feeling unlike any other.

​

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

 

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Why Mobile is Not the Future …

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Why Mobile is Not The Future - Donn Felker

That’s right, I don’t feel that mobile apps are the future. I’ve been saying this for years.

As someone who has spent the last decade plus working solely in the mobile space on Android, this is a hard realization to accept. Hell, I’ve even written books about mobile development and how to make apps. Some of my businesses surround this topic and the majority of my consulting business is mobile … so why am I saying this? Have I lost it?

Before you make any snap judgements about my prediction, please hear me out…

Let me ask you this…

What app CAN YOU NOT live without on your phone?​

You might say “Instagram”, “TikTok” or “Twitter”, “Email”, or something similar …

Wrong.

The web browser. ​

Why?

It’s the ultimate integration platform.

When you don’t have an app installed, what happens? You’re taken to a url in a browser and you interact with the website in which the url points to.

What if you don’t have a browser installed? Your phone, as a data device, is nearly useless. Sure, you can use some apps. But now let’s take the web views out of those apps. My guess is that over 60-80% of them will fail – if not more.

I bet that one of the most popular apps on your phone is your Email App.

For the sake of simplicity I’m going to assume you use Gmail.

Did you know that Gmail App is mainly a WebView?

It’s true.

Open any email in the Gmail App and zoom in (two finger pinch to expand) and you’ll notice it zooms in (try it on this one if you’re reading this in the Gmail mobile app). The zoom you see is the WebView in action. I’ve spoken to the folks who work on this app at Google and they were the ones that told me it was mainly a WebView. I was shocked at first. 🤯. Literally blew my mind a few years back.

One of the most popular apps in the world … is a WebView. Sure, there are some native components, but … the main component … is a WebView.

Think about it. Almost every app I work with has some web view in it somewhere. Take the web views away (and browsers) and BOOM, things don’t work.

However, don’t be dismayed.​

Android and iOS will have highly valuable purposes for the foreseeable future, though.

Many apps are far better as native apps. Such as media apps like video and audio editors. Social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and more. Maps and Games will need to be native as well and some other apps will too. It really depends on the use case.

​

The Next 10 Years …

I predict that in the next 10 years we will see a surge of web applications and web technology that enable us to run near native or faster than current native technology in our mobile and desktop browsers.

Many are going to say “everyone has been saying this for years and it hasn’t happened, it’s not going to happen.”

How do you know that? In my opinion, the writing is on the wall.

How will the web take over?

Browsers will get faster and better at what they do. They’ll have more features, etc. Data speeds are going to increase and it will be easier to download more data/web apps quickly.

Things like web assembly will have frameworks written for them in high level languages that we can easily code to (or new high level languages will be created). The devices will expose more of their native technology to the browser so developers can easily access it (more bluetooth, location, sensors, etc).

Eventually, storage, photos and system services and interactions will seem native on a web browser more-so than they already are.

It’s just how it will be.

When that happens, many apps will only need to be written once. For the browser, on the web.

HTML, JavaScript and CSS are cross-platform by default. They target the web browser that runs everywhere already.

Ultimately what will happen is … the browser will become the platform. ​

This is already happening and has been for years. ​

Look at Chromebooks. They run one thing …. CHROME. It’s a web browser in a laptop form.

If you have kids, you probably have a Chromebook or two at home right now for their schooling.

The writing is on the wall folks, I’m just reading it to you.​

Does that mean you should stop doing Android or iOS development today?

Not at all.

We’re not there yet. We’re not even in the infancy. We’re in the prenatal stage of this right now.

Things are still forming. We’re not sure what it’s going to look like, but we need to be aware of what’s going to be birthed in the future.

My gut and my bet is that the web will be the future.

Discuss this on Twitter

—

PS: I’m not telling you to abandon what you’re doing now if you’re a mobile developer. I just want you to be aware of the changes on the horizon that I’m seeing. If you’re interested in web development I advise you dive into a framework you find interesting. Such as Ruby on Rails, Python, Node.js (with Express), ASP.NET, Ktor (Kotlin based), or anything for that matter. Just tinker around with it. Build something with it. Having the skillset now will only help you in the future.

Did you know that you can write web applications with the Kotlin Programming language? I have a FREE 9+ hour course on the Kotlin Programming Language here. Its 100% FREE. Learn Kotlin and then dive into any number of Kotlin based web frameworks and you’ll be able to start with the web real easily.

Lastly, if you like content like this and want to receive it before anyone else does sign up for my email newsletter below. I send this content out to my newsletter a week to two weeks before it goes live on my site.

What Blog Platform Should I Use?

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What Blog Platform Should I Use?

In a very recent email I wrote about how you need to have a blog.

The question that pops up next is usually …

What blog platform should I use? Medium? WordPress? Gatsby? Jekyll? Or something else?

This is a HUGELY important question that needs a bit of thought put into it … but first things first …

You Need to Focus on Writing

Before I get into comparing the vast array of options that you have out there I want to state that if your goal is to start bogging then ….

YOU SHOULD NOT BE FOCUSING ON BUILDING SOFTWARE TO RUN A BLOG

In other words, if you’re a software engineer (and some of you are) you should not get consumed with “building my blog” with some latest and greatest technology that you can learn along the way.

If your goal is to write ….

Then put your ego away and start writing.

If your goal is to learn a new technology then stop reading this and go learn a new technology.

Far too often I see software folks lose all of their time “building” something like a blog with technology X, Y and Z and then never ship a blog post because they were too busy optimizing CSS, HTML, JavaScript, deployment methods with integrated CI/CD pipelines.

All of that is a waste of time if your goal is to start writing a blog.

So focus on writing – not on building a blog engine.

Choosing a Platform

Choosing a platform can turn into a serious case of analysis paralysis. I hope to solve that for you today by comparing some of the top platforms and what they have to offer (on the good and bad front).

At this time I’m going to compare the following blog systems that you can use.

  • Medium
  • WordPress
  • Ghost
  • Static Sites (Jekyll, Gatsby, etc)

I’m not going to cover SquareSpace or Wix or Blogger or any of those because I don’t feel they’re in the top three choices for the folks that read this blog (mainly software engineers and entrepreneurs).

Medium

Everyone loves Medium because it’s drop dead simple to get started with blogging. You can sign up for a free account and then start writing in their editor in less than a minute.

The tooling that they have is top notch. The editor is gorgeous and they make it really simple to craft your content quickly. They also have a very powerful recommendation engine for readers. Meaning that if you have a blog on Dog Grooming and you write about Dog Shampoos then another reader who is reading another dog blog about walking dogs (on Medium) then there is a very high chance that Medium will recommend your article to them to read next. Again this is only for other blogs on Medium. Medium will not recommend other sites to visit for you to find similar content. Just doesn’t work way. The power of their network recommendation engines for exposing your content to others is fantastic.

However, that’s where the great news comes to a close. Medium has more downfalls than positives in my opinion:

  • You have no ability to customize your blog.
  • You CANNOT ADD features like:
    • Custom Domains
    • Email sign up forms
    • Payment forms
    • Customized landing pages
    • Contact pages
    • Custom integrations
    • Etc

I could write a small book about things I don’t like about Medium.

Lastly, and most importantly, if your content is on Medium –

You are the product.

Meaning that Medium is using YOU as their product to sell other services.

Medium is using YOUR content as a way to recommend other things to other viewers.

Medium is using your content as a place for them to throw up their pay wall to get folks to convert to paid members.

They own everything on the site and can do that they want with it (to an extent of course).

Lastly, one of the things that REALLY bugs me about Medium is that you cannot have your own domain (they use allow this, but not anymore). That means your blog will be medium.com/@yourusername

So … thats kind of lame.

Thats like having a business and then printing your AOL email address on your business card.

In other words – it looks like shit it makes you and your brand look half-assed.

That said, Medium is simply a “easy to get going” blog. Game over.

PROS

  • Super simple to get started
  • Gorgeous editor
  • Great Recommendation Engine

CONS

  • You are their product
  • No custom domains, have to use the ugly medium.com/@yourusername format
  • No ability to provide landing pages, payments, custom pages, forms, opt-in, etc
  • Locked into their platform
  • Integrations are poor

WordPress

WordPress is the 800 pound gorilla in the blogging world (and internet in general). It has been reported that WordPress powers over 1/3 of the internet.

Thats wild. That’s a lot of sites. Apparently WordPress is doing something right.

To get set up with WordPress, you have a couple of options:

  1. Host on WordPress.com (they manage it)
  2. Self host or managed hosting.

Hosting on WordPress.com makes it easy to get going, but you’re limited because WordPress.com restricts certain plugins from being installed or utilized and there are a few other restrictions. Therefore I’m going to focus on the self-hosted or managed hosting solution. I’ll provide some links for self hosting and and managed solutions below. Sure, you’ll pay a few bucks, but it’s worth its weight in gold.

WordPress is very powerful. You can build a blog to a full blow website using WordPress. In this instance you will be building a blog.

You can use one of the built in themes or you can search for free themes on the internet (you can also search for premium themes if you don’t mind spending a few bucks). I recommend searching for “WordPress Themes” or “Free WordPress Themes” or “https://www.google.com/search?q=premium+wordpress+themes” if you’re searching online.

One of the best things about WordPress is the powerful plugin ecosystem. There are hundreds of thousands of plugins for WordPress. If you can think of it, its very possible a plugin has been created for WordPress. Plugins allow you to quickly add new features to your blog/site without any additional coding.

With a WordPress plugin you’ll be able to easily add email newsletter option support by adding of any number of email plugins that will allow you to do that. (You may need a email list provider already, such as ConvertKit, MailChimp, etc) but the plugins will be there for you to easily add it to the side bar or bottom/top of your site.

You can create custom pages to house custom content that is perhaps not a blog post, but something like a landing page where you decide you sell a product. Speaking of selling things, you can sell products on WordPress if you use one of the premium plugins like WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads.

If you think about doing something down the line, most likely it can already be done with WordPress.

Writing in WordPress is drop dead simple too. You create a new post, give it a title and write your blog post as you normally would. Add images, audio, video, etc all via the online editor that is built into WordPress. Hit publish and you’re live.

Hosting WordPress

I recommend using managed solution to handle your WordPress installation. I’ve tried running my own servers and then moved over to managed hosting years ago and I highly recommend it.

I recommend using a hosted solution such as:

What about GoDaddy? Meh.

GoDaddy overloads their servers with other sites which can be a real problem when your site needs to be responsive. WpEngine and FlyWheel have great response times and have fast servers and don’t overload you with other folks. If you have a problem with anything you can reach out to them and they’ll help you.

I’ve even had WpEngine representatives write some code for me to fix a particular image problem I had with their CDN – which brings up a good point. All of their images are stored on a CDN and delivered globally – making your site load that much faster.

Lastly, since you’ll be running your own blog you can have your own custom domain.

PROS

  • Simple to setup with a managed host
  • A huge plugin ecosystem
  • Very customizable
  • Good Editor
  • Supports Custom Domains

CONS

  • You have to pay $$ to host it
  • It can get slow if you over load your site with plugins
  • Often targeted by hackers because of how popular it is (if you stay with a managed host, like WpEngine they do a great job of keeping you up to date with security releases.)

Ghost

Ghost is another open source platform that is similar to WordPress but built on completely different technology. One of the biggest selling points of Ghost is that it’s fast.

The editor is simple and is very easy to use and you’ll find yourself creating some great looking pages quickly.

Ghost also offers a set of plugins, but it does not match the breadth of WordPress and that’s a downfall.

Hosting Ghost

Installation is where you’ll get stuck because you either need to install it yourself or host it. I’ll focus on hosting it.

At this point I’d only feel comfortable hosting on Ghost’s platform (Ghost(Pro) Pricing – Hosting from the creators of Ghost – Ghost.org) as they have the necessary skills to ensure that it runs correctly. I’d be skeptical that it would run correction or efficiently on another hosting platform.

Custom domains are also supported, which is great.

PROS

  • Simple to setup with a managed host
  • A growing plugin ecosystem
  • Good Editor

CONS

  • You have to pay $$ for managed hosting
  • Customization options are limited

Gatsby/Jekyll/Hugo/Etc

This section is meant to cover all static sites. Static sites don’t have a database and render pure HTML to the browser. This typically results in a site that is very fast with minimal configuration and can scale very well due to demand.

While these benefits sounds great there are a lot of downfalls.

Unfortunately you need to learn a templating language (such as markdown or something else). You’ll often need to work with HTML/CSS and perhaps some JavaScript. If you’re a coder, then this might be something that is interesting to you. Otherwise, this is something you’ll ant to avoid.

However, it is important to remember that the point of the blog is so that you can start writing, not create software to render the blog. If you find yourself writing HTML/CSS/JavasScript to render you’re writing … well … what are you really doing then?

Static sites do offer a lot of flexibility though. You can code them to do whatever you want.

Want a payment form?

Code it.

Want a email opt-inform?

Code it.

Want an Image Gallery?

Code it.

Sure, there are other tools that you could use to provide this functionality, and you should evaluate those … but you get the point… a static site through one of the many static site generators.

The real rub here is that your blog is going to be written in a text editor. You typically do not get a great editor to write your blog in. Furthermore, very often you’ll need to “compile” your pages so that they’re read to go on the web. Once again, you’ll need some technical prowess to handle this.

Hosting a Static Site

Hosting a static site requires that you have a place to put the files. Typically this can be done on a web server, Amazon S3, GitHub pages, or through other services like Nelify and Zeit. You will need some technical know how in order to set these up (which is beyond the scope of this article).

As you can imagine, since Gatsby is very customizable and can be hosted anywhere (it’s just HTML) you will be able to use a custom domain.

PROS

  • Very customizable
  • Very fast (response times)
  • Can Scale to many viewers due to it being raw html

CONS

  • Hosting is not simple
  • Most likely need to know how to code
  • Spend more time configuring the site and writing (most likely, yes I’m pointing at you engineers).
  • Technical Prowess is needed to fully use the platform

So, Which One Should I Use?

WordPress.

WordPress is the market leader for these types of sites (blogs). It has a rich plugin ecosystem that will be ready for you to grow when you need it and hosting with companies like WpEngine ensure your website is fast and secure.

You’ll find that as you need more from WordPress, it can offer almost anything you need.

Last piece of advice – try to build everything without code first.

WordPress allowed me to do that. It forced me to focus on my content and not on some cool engineering that ultimately would have acted as a distraction.

But … Can I go from X to WordPress if I like X better initially?

Sure, you can, but here again, if you decide to go to WordPress later you’re going to have to spend time migrating from one platform to another. If your goal is to write, why would you want to create more work for yourself?

Just go with WordPress now and save yourself the trouble.

📸Andrew Neel