This is awesome. Almost all content on the internet has been centralized by social networks, so it brings me joy to see an appetite for small, personal, non-commercial websites.
Eh, I've been on the hunt for non-commercial websites for close to a decade. It's pretty barren out there. Three types of people have websites these days:
1) People trying to sell something: courses, books, their resume, etc.
2) People interested in blogging, who give up after less than a year due to lack of visibility (compared to Medium/Substack)
3) People who created their website in the 90s and saw no reason to stop.
I'm sure they do, but I'm not looking in those places. Setting up a personal website comes with a certain amount of friction compared to SS or M, which IMO iS a better signal for whether that person is serious about doing this.
> > 2) People interested in blogging, who give up after less than a year due to lack of visibility (compared to Medium/Substack)
> You don’t think most people that post to the likes of Medium or Substack also give up quickly?
I think the parent meant "lack of visibility compared to Medium/Substack", not "give up after less than a year compared to [longer viability on] Medium/Substack". (If you, in turn, meant implicitly just to say "read Medium/Substack", then I think that fails on the "small, personal" criteria, and possibly also on "non-commercial".)
I read rchaud as saying “people that give up on blogging not long after starting because they’re not getting readers, whereas if they had posted on Medium/Substack they would get readers and would continue”, but I think that doesn’t reflect reality or the reasons people stop.
I agree! Which is why I'm excited by an award promoting small personal websites. It's like an oasis in a barren desert of people trying to sell you things.
