Though I don't want to rain on your parade too much, this is a classic "survivorship bias" problem. People for whom blogging works well, write these sorts of posts, showing the upside. People who find they're massively wasting their time typing into the void - or worse, wasting time AND providing attack-surfaces for cancellation attempts, give up and don't have their experiences counted as the downside.
It's akin to a lottery-ticket winner extolling why you should buy lottery tickets:
Buying a lottery ticket is low cost. And there are lottery winners. If you define "success" in an external way (i.e. not people just happy to have written), there's well-known mathematics called the "power law" which indicates only a very small number of people will have some success. Here's a very old now popularization:
The data shows blogging is actually *very overrated*.
You might also consider, for example, the extensive personal attack campaign against Scott Alexander, due to his blog. He came out ahead, but again, if the attackers had succeeded, you wouldn't be citing him as an example.
I know you’ve joked about writing the same post about factory farming lots of times but reading it for the 7th time finally convinced me to bite the bullet and go vegetarian (and offset consumption of other animal products). I never liked shrimp to begin with but i had eaten them, I’d have stopped.
Minor correction- Scott is a psychiatrist, not a psychologist (in fact, IIRC, even for a psychiatrist he doesn’t do much psychology in his clinical work)
Minor correction no 2. Scott wouldn't have remained an anonymous psychiatrist had he not start blogging, because when he started he was not a psychiatrist.
I think I will start now thanks. However it’s hard for me to give thoughts without a month of research behind them. At what point do you say good enough and hit print?
I literally got excited for you when Alex O'Connor name dropped you on his podcast the other day lol. There are several people I look up to that have read my essays as well and I'm consistently amazed that any of them care what a 20-something sitting in their bedroom has to say.
There is a bit of a contradiction here. You as a creator might have lots of things to say. You certainly do! You write a prodigious amount, a regular Issac Asimov. But there must also be readers interested in what you have to say. You write in philosophy. If you look at the tabs for the categories for Substack's you see there is one for philosophy, right next to comics. These tabs reflect categories of interest and your blog fits right into one of these. David Roman, who writes about history also has a category he slots into and has been very successful as have you.
A quarter of a century ago I was active on a discussion site about the Economic longwave or Kondratiev cycle. I was a major poster, some of the participants urged me to publish my stuff. I was no author (still aren't) but went ahead and published a book in Stock Market Cycles using a vanity press (iUniverse). Financial writer John Mauldin wrote nice things about it:
The book did well, sold about 7K copies which is *way* better than did any of my subsequent books I published through iUniverse. It also landed me a paying writing gig for a couple of years. This success led me to think, maybe, I could write shit as a retirement hobby when I retire in 20 years.
One of the folks at the longwave discussion group was starting a financial website and asked me to contribute free articles, which I did until he retired and sold the site.
My original plan was to write books and articles along financial lines, in which case, I would have a tab that applies to my stuff (i.e. an existing audience interested in that topic) like you do. Another one of the guys active on that longwaves discussion group has a substack here.
He writes financial stuff from a long cycle perspective and is heavily paywalled, yet has 7X more subscribers than I do, many of whom I assume are paid since it is so paywalled. So I suspect if I were writing on the same sort of financial stuff I originally did, I would have more subscribers.
I DO have something to say, but it is pretty niche; but nobody reads my stuff for the writing, I don't promote my blog except by being active on Notes after a subscriber pushed me to be more proactive in promoting my ideas.
My point it, there is a big difference between writing for the masses, like you do and niche. I have encountered a dozen 'stacks that do what you do. There are probably hundreds. To be heard you have to be better (commercially) than the competition. Which means you have to be very good, work very hard, and do promotional stuff that makes it like work. You are willing to do this and so are successful.
There is nobody who does what I do. I consulted an AI, put in a long description of the sort of stuff I do and am interested in and asked for links to substacks like that. It gave me four results. The first two were posts I'd written. A third was hardly related at all and of no interest to me. The last was somewhat relevant and I subscribed to it, but cannot not recall who I was (I have a lot of subscriptions). I wrote them with description of my blog got a perfunctory response and that has been it. While you know and interact with a number of other substackers in your genre, like that hilarious Amos Wollen dude.
What I am getting at it your experience is atypical.
> I’m also confident fish committed no war crimes.
True, because their battles are not governed by laws of combat.
A shoal of red-bellied piranhas can strip a prey down to its skeleton in minutes. Or the Stonefish that use chemical weapons (they they manufacture in their bodies) which they inject into their prey. Or the Moray Eel, or the Great White Shark, or ....
I couldn’t agree more. I started my “newsletter” aka blog 3 months ago and 700 subscribers later, I’m just getting started. It’s been both fun, rewarding, and affirming!
You will be happy to know you convinced me to put my thoughts online for maybe 4 people yet again, if only as a writing exercise. You may be less happy to know it does not support shrimp welfare as a sacred moral imperative :(
only a couple years before I join the esteemed ranks of the seemingly indefatigable 20 yr old philosophy people that populate this space 💀
at that time, I will credit you and you will lament that you have spawned your arch nemesis mwahahaha
Though I don't want to rain on your parade too much, this is a classic "survivorship bias" problem. People for whom blogging works well, write these sorts of posts, showing the upside. People who find they're massively wasting their time typing into the void - or worse, wasting time AND providing attack-surfaces for cancellation attempts, give up and don't have their experiences counted as the downside.
It's akin to a lottery-ticket winner extolling why you should buy lottery tickets:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1827:_Survivorship_Bias
Literally no one reads my writing and it's *still* been a valuable exercise!
Sure but starting a blog is low cost and a non-trivial number of people who do it have some success.
Buying a lottery ticket is low cost. And there are lottery winners. If you define "success" in an external way (i.e. not people just happy to have written), there's well-known mathematics called the "power law" which indicates only a very small number of people will have some success. Here's a very old now popularization:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050109003736/http://shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
The data shows blogging is actually *very overrated*.
You might also consider, for example, the extensive personal attack campaign against Scott Alexander, due to his blog. He came out ahead, but again, if the attackers had succeeded, you wouldn't be citing him as an example.
What are you referring to as the extensive personal attack campaign against Scott Alexander?
It's partially documented in the "Scott Alexander" section of this extensive examination:
https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
Note: "In February 2021, after Scott rearranged his life and quit his job in order to minimize the disruption from his name being revealed, ..."
That's a *huge* personal price to pay basically for having a popular blog.
Give us the secrets of successful blogging! It's a win-win
I know you’ve joked about writing the same post about factory farming lots of times but reading it for the 7th time finally convinced me to bite the bullet and go vegetarian (and offset consumption of other animal products). I never liked shrimp to begin with but i had eaten them, I’d have stopped.
Awesome!!!
Minor correction- Scott is a psychiatrist, not a psychologist (in fact, IIRC, even for a psychiatrist he doesn’t do much psychology in his clinical work)
Minor correction no 2. Scott wouldn't have remained an anonymous psychiatrist had he not start blogging, because when he started he was not a psychiatrist.
>I’d say the two best predictors of writing a good blog are:
>Not having too high standards—being willing to write things without doing a month of research.
I hate you
Great article, I fully agree with you! Blogging is awesome.
I think I will start now thanks. However it’s hard for me to give thoughts without a month of research behind them. At what point do you say good enough and hit print?
I literally got excited for you when Alex O'Connor name dropped you on his podcast the other day lol. There are several people I look up to that have read my essays as well and I'm consistently amazed that any of them care what a 20-something sitting in their bedroom has to say.
Thanks :).
Reading your posts on the EA Forum brought me to Substack, and a very similar thought process convinced me I should start my own! So thank you!
Fine, have it your way, I will consider it.
There is a bit of a contradiction here. You as a creator might have lots of things to say. You certainly do! You write a prodigious amount, a regular Issac Asimov. But there must also be readers interested in what you have to say. You write in philosophy. If you look at the tabs for the categories for Substack's you see there is one for philosophy, right next to comics. These tabs reflect categories of interest and your blog fits right into one of these. David Roman, who writes about history also has a category he slots into and has been very successful as have you.
A quarter of a century ago I was active on a discussion site about the Economic longwave or Kondratiev cycle. I was a major poster, some of the participants urged me to publish my stuff. I was no author (still aren't) but went ahead and published a book in Stock Market Cycles using a vanity press (iUniverse). Financial writer John Mauldin wrote nice things about it:
https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/stock-cycles-mwo112601
The book did well, sold about 7K copies which is *way* better than did any of my subsequent books I published through iUniverse. It also landed me a paying writing gig for a couple of years. This success led me to think, maybe, I could write shit as a retirement hobby when I retire in 20 years.
One of the folks at the longwave discussion group was starting a financial website and asked me to contribute free articles, which I did until he retired and sold the site.
https://safehaven.com/contributors/michael-a-alexander
My original plan was to write books and articles along financial lines, in which case, I would have a tab that applies to my stuff (i.e. an existing audience interested in that topic) like you do. Another one of the guys active on that longwaves discussion group has a substack here.
https://substack.com/@theeconomiclongwave?utm_source=top-search
He writes financial stuff from a long cycle perspective and is heavily paywalled, yet has 7X more subscribers than I do, many of whom I assume are paid since it is so paywalled. So I suspect if I were writing on the same sort of financial stuff I originally did, I would have more subscribers.
I DO have something to say, but it is pretty niche; but nobody reads my stuff for the writing, I don't promote my blog except by being active on Notes after a subscriber pushed me to be more proactive in promoting my ideas.
My point it, there is a big difference between writing for the masses, like you do and niche. I have encountered a dozen 'stacks that do what you do. There are probably hundreds. To be heard you have to be better (commercially) than the competition. Which means you have to be very good, work very hard, and do promotional stuff that makes it like work. You are willing to do this and so are successful.
There is nobody who does what I do. I consulted an AI, put in a long description of the sort of stuff I do and am interested in and asked for links to substacks like that. It gave me four results. The first two were posts I'd written. A third was hardly related at all and of no interest to me. The last was somewhat relevant and I subscribed to it, but cannot not recall who I was (I have a lot of subscriptions). I wrote them with description of my blog got a perfunctory response and that has been it. While you know and interact with a number of other substackers in your genre, like that hilarious Amos Wollen dude.
What I am getting at it your experience is atypical.
> I’m also confident fish committed no war crimes.
True, because their battles are not governed by laws of combat.
A shoal of red-bellied piranhas can strip a prey down to its skeleton in minutes. Or the Stonefish that use chemical weapons (they they manufacture in their bodies) which they inject into their prey. Or the Moray Eel, or the Great White Shark, or ....
I couldn’t agree more. I started my “newsletter” aka blog 3 months ago and 700 subscribers later, I’m just getting started. It’s been both fun, rewarding, and affirming!
You will be happy to know you convinced me to put my thoughts online for maybe 4 people yet again, if only as a writing exercise. You may be less happy to know it does not support shrimp welfare as a sacred moral imperative :(
only a couple years before I join the esteemed ranks of the seemingly indefatigable 20 yr old philosophy people that populate this space 💀
at that time, I will credit you and you will lament that you have spawned your arch nemesis mwahahaha
Been blogging since January--after years of hemming and hawing, basically in line with the psychological patterns described in this Fake Nous post (https://open.substack.com/pub/fakenous/p/self-sabotage?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=b23a3)--and can confirm that it's the best thing ever for your thinking, joie de vivre, etc.