Why developers must start blogging and how to start?

Developers are lifelong learners. We create, learn, gain experience, and continue creating something new. Learning and applying the knowledge from it is an essential need for us.

Design, Code, Test, and Deploy are a developer's mainstream work. However, most of us miss the opportunities to gather a wealth of knowledge in each step. You will be surprised to know that It doesn't take much extra work to do this knowledge-gathering. In contrast, its impact is enormous on the developer and the entire developer community.

Yes, in this article, we will discuss why a developer must consider blogging, their benefits, and most importantly, how to get started with it.

This article mainly targets developers willing to write but reluctant about it or unsure how to get started. If you are a blogger, please leave a comment below sharing your experience and expertise on this topic. I'm sure it will help many of us.

✅ First, The Art and Science of Writing

Note taking is nothing new. We have been doing it for years in schools and colleges. We take notes because we do not want to dump everything in our memory and try to recollect it later. It also helps to register a concept well in our brain when we write it down.

But is note-taking the same as writing an article? Not entirely, but they have similar kinds of intent and characteristics from the writer. Taking notes can be in a rough format, whereas writing an article should be more polished, managing both the art and science.

Writing is an art as It requires creative thinking. We all are storytellers inside. The knowledge of the subject and our storytelling methods make the writing a pleasant experience to read.

Writing is also a science because, as a writer, you apply rules—the rules of grammar, structure, format, and methodologies. Later in the article, we will cover how to get started with the art and the science of writing. But first, let's get convinced about Why to Write?

✅ Why To Start Blogging?

As developers, let us understand some of the bright sides of blogging. All the pointers below are purely from the experiences I have gathered so far. In case you have additional points, please feel free to post a comment below.

⭐ Write For Yourself

Solved a problem at work? Learned something impressive and new? Write about it. There are higher chances that you may face a similar technical struggle again, and you will thank yourself for writing it down.

Write for your information. It is much easier to relate how you have dealt with a problem in the past, take the help from it, and then solve it again.

Stack Overflow proves that two or more developers face similar kinds of technical challenges. We see plenty of questions on similar kinds of issues and their answers. So, if you have taken notes of a problem solving, let it go out publicly as a blog post. It will help many developers seeking solutions to similar problems.

When you share knowledge and information publicly, you create an environment to share and learn. The more your share, the more you learn from the feedback. It eventually encourages you to explore more, hence gaining more knowledge.

⭐ Freelancing Opportunities

Consistently writing and content creation opens up many opportunities. One of them is as a freelance writer. Freelance writers can earn between $100 to $500 per article. The more you create content and socialize, the clients notice your excellent work and approach you. Alternatively, you can also approach companies to pay for writing articles for them.

Check out these resources to help you with the publications that pay you for writing articles:

⭐ Full-Time Blogger

Some companies hire full-time technical content writers. You need to create documentation, guides, and learning materials as part of the job role. If writing is your passion and you get a full-time job to do it, that's a win-win.

⭐ Freemium, Ebooks, Hardcover

Once you start writing, your passion and habit can drive you to write e-books and sell them online. Publishers approach writers for writing hardcover books too with reasonable royalty. Writing opens up more opportunities than what you can think of.

⭐ Blogging as a Service

How? Charge interested parties for publishing their articles on your blog. If you wonder how is it even possible, let me tell you it can happen when you write consistently, and your blog gets visibility.

However, you need to be cautious about the parties' authenticity, the article's quality, whether it suits your readers, etc.

⭐ Indirect Opportunities

Having a healthy blogger profile opens up additional opportunities like,

Leading an online blogging community
Speaker as a subject matter expert
Developer Advocate
Paid article reviewers
Full-time/part-time job offers

Consistent blogging makes you visible in the developer communities. People start knowing you for your writing and technical skills.

✅ How To Get Started With Blogging?

I hope you are now familiar with the many advantages of blogging. Let us see how to get started with it.

⭐ Start

First of all, you need to write. Nothing else will matter if you do not take the first step toward writing. It doesn't matter what you start with. The more you wait, the more you will procrastinate about it. So start with any topic of your interest.

Once you have decided to start, decide on a blogging platform that suits your need and style the most. You can always create your blogging platform if you want to, but some excellent free ones are available to take care of your needs.

Here are a few of them:

⭐ Trigger

Honestly, it is not easy to write consistently and create quality content. You must plan, research, gain knowledge, and find the time. However, most of these are not very challenging when you've identified the Trigger.

A trigger is anything that helps you to start an activity and keep you on track. Find one for blogging. The trigger can be anything that motivates you to start and go on. Examples of triggers are:

A blogging challenge you want to participate in, a friendly competition among friends/peers, a self-given target(an article a day/week/month?)
Your passion for knowledge sharing.

⭐ Finding Niche

Many of us give up writing(or any form of content creation) just because we get overwhelmed and think we must learn a lot first. But you don't have to. Staying relevant to your niche differs from learning many other new things.

Polish your niche area and create content on it. Do not worry if 100s of articles exist already on a similar topic. You are unique, your style is unique, and your content will be unique too.

⭐ Hobby To Habit

One of the most challenging things in human life is to convert hobbies into habits. Especially the good ones! Content creation or blogging is not different from this.

Once you start blogging, put a plan around and stick to it. Don't panic if you can't meet at times. The only thing that matter, do you want to continue or not?

Here is a guide that may help with to write consistently. You can also look into the my favourite blogging tools to make you a productive blogger.