The N Benefits of Having Your Own Website

I recently read Wiwi’s post “Internet Peasant” and deeply related to it.

https://wiwi.blog/blog/internet-peasant

I’ve been writing my blog for almost ten years now. If you add in my experience with Wretch and Pixnet, it’s been nearly 20 years. Why is it so important to have your own blog? In this era, short-form video and social media offer huge traffic and exposure, and the ROI of blogging seems too low.

Exactly because the ROI is low in the short term, that’s why you should do it. In the AI era, authenticity has become a scarce resource.

• You have complete control over the layout and content, and can style the CSS however you want
  • You can embed YouTube, Mermaid syntax, and math formulas
  • You can even build your own interactive features
• You can write long-form posts, short posts, stream-of-consciousness updates, or even things only ten people would understand
• There are no likes or comments; if someone wants to contact the author, they have to use email, which makes the conversation feel more genuine
• Without external feedback, you can focus more on the content you actually want to write
• Blog posts are easier to search
• You can read via RSS
• The people subscribing to your RSS are genuinely people who want to read what you write
• You won’t suddenly lose all your content overnight because a platform shuts down, gets acquired, or changes its algorithm (Wretch, Google Reader, and Medium’s paywall are all cautionary examples)
• The URL is yours (buying a domain for a year is cheaper than buying Starbucks!)
• No algorithm decides who gets to see your posts; only people willing to come read them will see them
• You don’t need to hook attention in the first three seconds—you can take your time and write a long article that takes twenty minutes to read
• There’s no artificial “word limit” forcing you into a box
• No one will place an ad next to your content
• Something you write might save a stranger’s life one night five years later when they search for it—and that kind of impact can’t be measured by likes
• A blog is a way to practice thinking in public, and thinking in public naturally attracts like-minded people
• Email filters out 99% of the noise, leaving only people willing to have deep conversations
• Writing a blog is more effective than a business card and better at building trust capital
• Technical articles can amplify your influence
• Markdown is one of the least outdated formats there is
• In an era that is becoming increasingly short-term and increasingly anxious, long-term thinking itself is more valuable

By 2026, setting up a website and writing a blog has become easier and easier. You can check out Bear to quickly set one up yourself. There are also other options to consider; personally, I recommend Ghost, which can be self-hosted or hosted for you (for a fee). It lets you customize the theme or choose one, and it also supports newsletters and Stripe integration