i understand this well. it took a while for scotch to gain any traffic and even longer until google ranked us higher.

look at your most successful articles and see if you can create a niche from those topics. if you're interested in that topic, you can write more on it and position yourself as a leading person in that topic

Sanity and Strapi are amazing. Especially with Sanity having their sanity.io/create

Sanity probably has the faster setup time. Strapi isn't far behind though.

Strapi does a great job being an app backend. Custom content types + relationships + ability to do custom things on models by diving into the code.

Sanity is amazing for sites like blogs, portfolios, ecommerce.

They are both great tools; all depends on what you're trying to build

we focus on 3 things: code, content, and community

i try to hit as many as possible within the same time period. so streaming is community. content is writing articles/making videos. code is building out fun demo apps

really its just having fun with the community all day long

That sounds like a lot of fun, haha, Chris on Code!

Hey hey! That one wasn't me (it was twitter.com/codebeast) and I haven't messed with 8base myself.

Looks awesome though.

I'm a big fan of not setting up my own infrastructure if I can help it. Lowcode/nocode solutions help us focus on the frontend and our customers faster. I'm all for Firebase, 8base, Hasura, Nhost type solutions

1. Pick something that you need in your personal life and try to build it. One of the first things I ever built was a workout timer that I used for myself. Building and deploying fun tools for yourself can help with this.

2. If you're feeling burnt out, know that it's cool to take a break (even a week long one) and recharge. If you're talking about struggling when learning, there's always that hard part when learning anything new, like a new language, skill, coding, whatever else.

healthcareevolve.ca/what-is-the-valley-of-disappo…

1. The 1st question for each person should be "what are your goals?" If it's to grow a brand, get a job, make a little side money, then a blog is a very good idea. People's own goals will be the reason they blog. It only takes finding their goal and nudging in that direction.

Thank you a lot Chris on Code.

1. read through all of the docs
2. build out a hello world
3. build out an app a little larger than a hello world

that's usually a good base to start with any new technology

Just kept writing what I was learning about and it resonated with developers luckily. Provide real value first and the rest (traffic, traction) will follow

I never did any outreach to attract new authors. It was all word of mouth and I love all the authors that have written with Scotch.

1. it started as a personal blog. not too much planning. just writing down whatever fun stuff i learned when i was freelancing

2. love hacktoberfest also! it's the best job in the world! we focus on 3 Cs, code content and community. basically building cool things and hanging out with the community. cant beat it.

3. oooo great question. tentacles!

Growing traffic has always been about providing real value to readers.

A big thing to remember is to keep articles straight and to the point. The less complex articles usually do better for SEO since people are searching for that sort of stuff.

So it's mainly about SEO or did you have other channels as well?

Thanks for the support! I have no big secret really. Just embracing the grind and writing 1 article at a time.

Scotch has been around 6 years now so it's definitely about consistency and trying to do something productive weekly!

Consistency is the big secret I guess

You're on the right path! Let necessity and problem solving guide your path. Find a real problem that you have and that some other people have and try to provide a solution to solve it.

Problem solving and providing value is the core of any good business

I got started because somebody gave me a pirated version of Adobe's Dreamweaver. I saw the price tag on it and said "wow I should learn this cool thing". I saw how bad the HTML was on the WYSIWYG builder so I learned the code myself.

My getting started guide has always been "if I had to learn it, then I might as well put it on paper and write it down". This is how Scotch got started, as a personal coding diary of sorts.

I read a ton of Tuts Plus, CSS Tricks, Smashing Magazine, A List Apart, and more great blogs to get started.

Thanks for sharing! Chris on Code

I started Scotch as a personal blog. A personal coding diary of sorts. Just took it 1 article at a time.

Google sends us 90% of our traffic. So writing good articles, providing value to readers, and having good SEO foundations, helped us spread awareness.

Also the community has been amazing with word of mouth and guest authors coming in to also write on their experiences.

90% of our traffic is Google Search. I learned a ton about SEO. First and foremost, provide value to readers and Google somehow knows to translate that to ranking you higher.

We've never done any outbound ads or anything like that. In the early days, we did share to communities like Reddit webdev and Hacker News and stuff like that.

Creating good quality content brings the best marketing, word of mouth.

So usually I'll say "just start". I've been trying to find more actionable advice though.

• Start small
• Set a goal of creating 1 piece of content per week
• You already have the knowledge in your head to create 100 pieces of content.

Scotch.io, I was blogging for 8 months without ever getting any traffic. Create content because you get to write down/record what you love doing.

Chris on Code I am also new to blogging. I feel a strong sense of belief in the points you said

Chris Sev I wrote my first blog post today. Thanks for the advice.

I never thought Scotch would be anything more than a personal blog.

In fact, Scotch.io was a placeholder domain. We always had planned to change it out, but then never did after we got a little traffic.

Scotch was built 1 article at a time, based on whatever fun stuff we were learning that month.

I don't really take selfies but I do have this on Twitter!

twitter.com/chrisoncode/status/1297589334103584768

You don't have to live stream! There are so many great outlets to get content out from blogging to YouTube.

Do whatever you're most comfortable with

Here's my entire setup gear: kit.co/chrisoncode/megadesk

I'll be moving at the end of the month and redoing my setup. I'll be posting a writeup about it then!

The biggest thing to keep in mind is the value you provide to customers.

It's easy to get bogged down with internal things like overengineering.

One thing that I knew in the beginning, it was all about the content and the value it provided. I forgot about that somewhere in the middle and focused too much on overengineering.

I redesigned the site a ton when I should've focused on content. Cite: scotch.io/bar-talk/announcing-scotch-v8-our-bigge…

biggest lesson: focus on your core product and dont forget about it. spending time on things that dont provide value to your customers are a distraction

it has been a speed adjustment. it's different when you are the only one that needs knowledge about company processes. its a whole other game when there are multiple employees across multiple teams that need the same info. there are benefits and downsides to both

i sold a paper airplane as a kid. for scotch, the first dollar came in from adsense payout after we got some traffic. that was about a year of blogging.