---
title: 'Blogging tips after 3 years and a 100+ posts'
slug: 'blogging-tips-after-3-years'
date: '2020-04-13'
thumbnail: '/thumbnails/writing.png'
tag: 'writing'
canonicalUrl: 'https://amanhimself.dev/blog/blogging-tips-after-3-years/'
---

![cover_image](https://i.imgur.com/XHghbGg.jpg)

> Your time is limited... - Steve Jobs

A blog can be a useful piece for many reasons not only to you but to many others. Such it has been in my journey. Not only I have been able to generate leads (being a contract developer, it helps), it has been one of the most important things I have done in my career of being a dev. Sometimes, I do go back and read my blog posts when seeking information for a specific topic.

I've been [blogging](https://amanhimself.dev) in tech and writing tutorials using various JavaScript frameworks (Node.js, Reactjs, React Native, Gatsby) for three years now. One of the biggest advantages through blogging I have found lies in the previous sentence. I have the freedom to try and play around with many different stacks and frameworks. This helps me understand about the betterment of their use case.

The motivation behind this article is to share my thoughts on blogging since I have been asked too many times to provide some insight from my journey and why I think blogging can help you achieve your goals at a faster rate if you are willing to dip your toes. Or let us just say you want to share what you know and you find blogging as the medium to do so.

## Its about consistency

One of the major lessons I have learned from blogging is that to build an audience or if you are trying to scratch that itch of sharing what you know, you have to be consistent. That said, it doesn't matter how many blog posts you write and publish in a week or a month, achieving the deadlines you set for yourself, you need to be diligent.

When I started blogging on [Medium](https://medium.com/@amanhimself) I wasn't much consistent for the first year. But I was putting content out in form shorter posts or long length tutorials once in a while.

After a while, it made me realize how far I have come and how can I improve managing my time if I want to continue to publish more content. It helps me to create a schedule in my daily routine and dedicate several hours in a week either researching or building app demos and writing tutorials around them.

## Topic consistency is a thing too

Apart from managing one's time and schedule, you have to be focused as to what your blog is going to be about. For example, when I started blogging, for a long time, I was writing posts on Node.js and backend. With time, my focus of work shifted towards front-end development and more precisely, towards the React Native ecosystem.

In recent times, my focus on writing tutorials on what I do and know shifted with that. You have to keep the content you are sharing in some sense, professional for the audience to read. You cannot assume the type of reader you are going to have.

## Draft your posts in advance

Plan ahead. This is the best suggestion I can give it to you if you are interested in pursuing blogging in tech for a longer period of time.

Draft your posts in advance and make sure that it helps you stick to your publishing schedule even when you are taking vacations or having a week off.

I usually write almost all of my blog posts in Markdown format and store each draft on my laptop, inside a directory of [my blog site](https://amanhimself.dev). This way, it saves me time when I publish them since I use Gatsby and Markdown format for each blog post.

When I publish on sites like [Medium](https://medium.com/@amanhimself) that do not support Markdown format completely, I use a tool called [Markdown to Medium](https://markdowntomedium.com/) which allows you to publish markdown formatted posts on Medium with correct syntax highlighting **( this is important if your post contain code snippets)** using editable GitHub gists. It is fast and it works like a charm. (_Shoutout to [Jake Bennett](https://twitter.com/jacobbennett) for creating it and making it free to use_). However, at the same time, publishing on sites like [Dev.to](https://dev.to/amanhimself), Markdown can be your friend.

## List your ideas

Having a list of ideas is beneficial. Not every day you are going to feel like brainstorming about new topics or micro-managing a bigger topic in its subparts.

This helps you follow the previous step too, and help you plan with a clearer vision of what you might be writing or publishing in upcoming weeks or months.

Use tools that are favorable to you to manage a list of ideas. I use Notion to track each blog post. From the idea to the date, it gets published.

You can decide on what topics you want to write about. Not everything has to be too technical or walk through about building "X" with a specific framework or a stack or have to belong. It can be something work-related you are passionate about, something that you might find super simple (like writing Redux sagas) but it helps someone less experienced or who are just starting in their career.

## Publish on your platform

This is a lesson I have learned late and in a hard way. Even though I have been professionally blogging for about two years now, I only did create and hosted my blog in the middle of last year.

I don't want you to make this mistake. Since day one, make sure you have a blog hosted on under your domain and it is linked with your portfolio website. It doesn't have to be pretty. Even though you are writing on other platforms or for publications, make sure to ask about their policy of re-publishing the post on your platform. Most publications do allow and generally have time span after which you can publish it under your domain provided the post links back to the original link/website.

Having one's platform with blog posts (regardless of their number) is much better than having no personal blogging platform at all. It is the core. When someone comes knocking on your down for a role or an offer, at first, they are going to see your website/platform and rather than publication.

## Study not other bloggers but content creators too

One advantage we have these days is there is no shortage of the amount of content and platforms that you can host. To keep up to date with topics you want to write about, surely, at a certain point in time, you can never know everything about it.

Apart from other blogs I regularly follow, I exhaustively use Twitter, Medium, Dev.to, tech podcasts, official documentation and sometimes books to keep myself up to date and research whats going on. I can never be an expert on everything but I do love to share my perspective and I believe everyone has a unique perspective. Also researching and learning go hand-in-hand. I learn new things every day and at a faster rate when I share them.

## You learn how to take criticism

Blogging taught me how to separate constructive criticism (which I consider actual feedback) from the criticism we find every day on the internet and that doesn't help anyone.

Some places on the internet exist where people are too harsh in their opinions but that's a good thing. You get a sense of feeling whom to hear and whom to shut out completely. In other words, you grow.

## Share everything, everywhere

If you are writing on your blog but not sharing on every available platform that costs nothing, you are not helping much. Your blog post tends to help someone you might even don't know them.

It helps to drive the community forward and help someone when they are actually seeking useful information to their problem that you have already faced or shared.

Platforms I regularly share my content on:

- Medium
- Dev.to
- Twitter
- Reddit
- Hacker News
- LinkedIn
- Instagram
- Major publications like [freeCodeCamp](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/)

Getting on the first page of the search engine is amazing but that doesn't happen in every scenario or overnight. Use these platforms. Cross-post and use canonical URLs and get on the wagon.

## Summary

I hope this post serves its purpose and I urge you to go ahead and write your blog post if you haven't started already. There is no worst-case scenario here. Have a starting point, and stick to it. Also, I do consider writing is a skill in life worth learning and practicing, and blogging helps me do that.

Happy Writing!


Blogging tips after 3 years and a 100+ posts

---
title: 'To Travel, A Tech Conference and One Million views - a Recap'
date: '2019-07-02'
slug: 'to-travel-a-tech-conference-and-one-million-views-a-recap'
thumbnail: '/thumbnails/writing.png'
tag: 'writing'
canonicalUrl: 'https://medium.com/hackernoon/to-travel-a-tech-conference-and-one-million-views-a-recap-22e135a598c3'
---

The year 2019 started for me a bit unusual than the previous ones. I never expected to get so much attraction on my blog posts that are mostly published here. Had only one trip planned, ended up doing two. Did end up attending a tech conference too. Something when I started my career as a developer I hadn’t thought of.

Six months are already gone, hence, if you are on Twitter, you might be seeing the following tweet at least once a day.

This year so far has been a roller coaster ride. Similar to one I had in [January](https://www.instagram.com/p/BtK7sa3BOG3/) but a bit slow.

### Achievements 🎉

This year, I set out some personal goals to achieve. Some came along the way unexpectedly or surprises. For some, I did sweat a lot. Some took more than the usual amount of coffee cups.

Here is a list of goals that I had mind when 2019 came along that I have achieved so far while some of them are still a work in progress and few of them are literally surprises.

✅ Reach 500 subs on the weekly newsletter

🚧 Reach 5k followers on Twitter

✅ Revamp Personal Website

✅ Receive a Patron on [Patreon.com](https://patreon.com/amanhimself) _(surprise)_

✅ 1 Million blog post views

✅ Under 30 days, receive more than 100k views on blog posts*(surprise)*

✅ Reach 1k followers on Instagram

✅ Travel abroad to at least one country, ended up traveling to 5

🚧 Write 50 articles/tutorials on React Native _(published 19 so far)_

Most of these goals were to be achieved over the span of 6 months and few of them are still work in progress. For me, having personal goals as such, help to move forward in the direction I am ambitious for, that is, to spend a healthy amount of time creating content on development, teaching fellow developers when in need, using the set of technologies or frameworks that I am familiar and work with.

I have made some bad decisions along the way. Some good ones too. Accepting opportunities that I wasn’t ready for did make me see things from a different perspective and helped me grow as a human being.

### Attend a Tech conference 👩‍💻

If your world revolves around software development in general, my suggestion is to attend at least one tech conference in your lifetime. Heck, attend 10 if you want!

The reason I am stating that is again come from a recent and dear personal experience. In the month of April 2019, I attended [**App.js Conf**](https://appjs.co/)**.** A one of its kind. A tech conference for Expo and React Native developers held for the first time in Krakow, Poland. It was my first time.

Twitter is quite famous in the dev world. Many thrive to make connections, many achieve that too. You can get to know almost any new framework being released, and learn it as well through Twitter. You might also be able to make good connections. Get to know people from an unconditional point of view for a long period of time. Open a new website or business. All that is good in my honest opinion.

<img src='https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*7SYuZvH2pZnM0H79V4ttPg.jpeg' />

But attending a tech conference in person is a bit intentional. It will help you reach people on a personal level. I would say, if you are lucky enough to have awesome meetups or a conference happening in your area or city you live in, try attending a few. You never know what lies behind that door.

As I was telling about the conference I attended. I personally met some awesome human beings, who made me realize that there are good and modest human beings on this planet who are willing to help a total stranger or give them company and share moments. I met those whom I admire in the dev world and learned a great number of new things. Also, I never expected someone to recognize me from my Twitter handle. I still don’t believe that, but it happened.

😱

_That was my reaction._

I am planning to attend one more either the latter half of this year or early next year.

### Writing ✍️

For the majority of the last year, I had stopped writing. I did run a blog for five years writing book reviews, interviewing some well-known authors and manage to be awarded twice as the [Best Book Blogs in India](http://readingbooks.blog). But in the end, I lost much of my interest as I felt there wasn’t much left to do. I slowly moved my passion for writing in the tech world and boy did it open doors for me that I never know existed.

Along the way, I did learn a thing or two on how to promote content without hurting anyone’s feelings, using the internet. I never expected to reach 1 million views on a platform that I have for a little over two years.

I have written for various blogs, magazines, Medium publications. To manage and keep them in one place, I started maintaining a Github repository. You will find all the links 👇

[**amandeepmittal/tech-writing**](https://github.com/amandeepmittal/tech-writing)

The lesson I learned from this is that if you are passionate about something, can’t stay away from it for a while, and are consistently taking action in that area, you will achieve _heights_. Passion does help you drive through that prolonged path.

### Travel ✈️

_Why? Why not save all the 💲for your future self? Why travel at all?_

Many of my acquaintances did not know this but since my teenage days, I had been eager to travel. I have been shut until I had to force myself a little to make it happen.

_Now, I am in love with it._

We all have our own reasons related to the word “Travel”. Mine is to learn new things, meet new people, have brief moments with a few, or make some connections, visit places that I think are astonishing, manage everything from planning to expenses, food, accommodation and so on, and be myself. Finally, I did manage to travel to five countries including one of the most lavish cities in the middle east and four beautiful European countries that I am still amazed by their beauty and the calmness they possess.

Traveling to different places do have a deep impact on me. There are some important things I learned about myself and especially how I want to take the approach in my career and life in general. And other things that are essential to the places I visited or the people I met along the way.

I do have some future plans for traveling. I want to experiment with it this time, and not just take a vacation, but try to stay longer in one place. It might end up being a fulfilled personal goal that you get to hear about at the end of this year.

[Originally published at Hackernoon](https://medium.com/hackernoon/to-travel-a-tech-conference-and-one-million-views-a-recap-22e135a598c3)


🔥 2 Posts filtered by tag "writing"

Blogging tips after 3 years and a 100+ posts

To Travel, A Tech Conference and One Million views - a Recap