Location, location, location
The most important consideration in buying real estate is its location.
The saying goes. Well, that’s true. But not only of real estate. The same is true for someone selling hot food out of a van in a lay-by. Pick a bad lay-by: make no money. pick a good one: prosper. It’s common sense. Writing on someone else’s platform is like being a market trader. Competing with all the other traders in the market (not necessarily for money, more for attention). Having your own blog is like being in a lay-by, on your own. It’ll take you a while to find out if you picked a good lay-by (and are providing good food)!
Got something to say write? Start your own blog. Get a domain name, get a VPS, pick a static site generator (there are lots).1 Spend a day figuring things out, start blogging.
But, we’ve got Facebook, Linkedin, Tiktok, X etc now!
No. The owners of those platforms have them. Not you. You are a user. Ever read the terms and conditions? Unlikely. Ever tried moving all of your content from their platform to somewhere else? Good luck with that. Even the latest darling for professional writers, Substack, has quite a few terms you’ll need to agree to. Don’t forget to read the Publisher Agreement as well!
In the Old Days
In the early days of the web, their were sites, forums, blogs. That was it, pretty much. Everyone knew how important the web would become. I’ve owned the domain simonharrison.net since 2002. Back in the day I had a blog. Then, for some reason, I didn’t (I forget why). Many people forgot about blogging. Went onto a plaform that made everything easier. Or, just went on the internet when they needed to, as a tourist. Well, that ease made them untold billions of dollars and made you inept at having your own home on the internet (erm, what’s a VPS?). Correct that error in 2025.
What’s the Point?
This blog is not about making money. Not made a penny and don’t plan on making a penny from it. I don’t have analytics set up. I did but decided that it didn’t matter if I get one visitor a month, or one million. I have things to say occasionally and I write a post. Sometimes I get an email from a happy reader thanking me for a tutorial post. Sometimes I get an email from an old friend who randomly searched for my name, surprised that I was the first result. Sometimes I get an email from someone responding to a post asking for more information.2
That is why I do this and why you should too. Welcome to the long tail of the internet…
Footnotes
1 Just be thankful you aren’t writing all HTML by hand, then FTP’ing to your ~10MB slice of someone’s server on a dialup connection.
2 Jean, I sent you an email about your scoliosis, would really like to know how things are with you.