Item — HN Reader

You can give a look as https://write.as/, never used it but heard a lot of good about it.

Also try to find websites linked to what you are writing about. For instance, for articles about programming, https://dev.to/ offers a very good platform, and so does https://hackernoon.com/. Both guarantee that you completely own what you write there.

But to me the best solution is still to have you own blog. Many platforms will offer you a Wordpress or Ghost blog for a small amount each month (I would stay away from free platforms, most of them still own your content), and if you feel comfortable with a little tech steps, you can try a static blog generator such as Jekyll or Eleventy, and host it on GitHub or Netlify.

For my blog (https://scastiel.dev) I use Eleventy, hosted on Netlify, with my own domain name. Works like a charm :)

1 comments

Thanks! I am capable of running my own (heck, I even wrote my own blog engine in 2002!! Didn't even call it blog back then), but I know I don't have time to maintain it properly.

Also, what I like about Substack and Medium is how easy it is for people to subscribe and discover. Their "distribution" is great.

I know write.as, what it lacks is a stronger distribution.

Thanks for your tips anyway!

If something you write is a big success, especially tech/programming related stuff, chances are, most of the traffic over time will come in from search engines.

Also most of the SEO juice (backlinks etc) comes in shortly after publishing. If Medium/other-platform goes defunct or decides to remove you it will be very hard to rebuild it.

Much better to separate distribution from hosting. The small boost they will give you at the beginning is not worth it IMO.