what to write about in your new blog

the blank editor is lying to you. it says your week was ordinary and nothing in it deserves a post. meanwhile, somebody is searching tonight for exactly the problem you solved on tuesday without thinking twice.

so write about what you did. an ordinary week holds more posts than any brainstorm: the thing you fixed, the tool you switched, the mistake that cost an hour. the material shows up on its own - you just have to write it down.

the belief that stops most people is "my life isn't interesting enough to document". interesting was never the bar. useful is. the person searching for the fix you found doesn't need you to be fascinating - they just want what worked, written down by someone who was there.

the four sources that refill on their own

what you did. the fix, the build, the purchase you researched for days. write it up with the numbers and the dead ends left in.
what people ask you. a question a friend or coworker brings you has been typed into google by a thousand strangers already. answer it once, properly, in public.
what you're learning. beginner notes beat expert summaries because they still remember what was confusing.
what you searched for and couldn't find. the post you needed last month doesn't exist. write it, and the next person searching lands on you.

picked by a toola topic with search volume and none of your experience behind it. any machine can write this post, and now does.

picked from your weeka problem you actually handled, with the numbers and the dead ends. nobody else was there to write it.

big blogs run on the same four sources. beth moncel started budget bytes in 2009 while buried in student loans, pricing her own cooking down to the penny - the cost-per-recipe write-ups became the whole brand, and the site outgrew her into a full team. troy hunt built have i been pwned and writes up his own breach investigations; he has testified before the us congress on data breaches. neither invents topics. both write down what they did.

what not to write about

news and commentary expire in a week, and the big sites own the topic anyway. skip both.

skip topics a keyword tool picked for you when there's no experience behind them. if any machine could write the post, the results page now handles it and the reader never arrives.

re-summarizing someone else's post adds a copy to a pile that didn't need one.

keep a question log

one note on your phone, named "posts". when a question, an empty search, or an hour-eating problem crosses your day, add a dated line while it's fresh:

jul 12 - asked at work: how do you get invoices paid without chasing
jul 09 - searched "compost bin smells", every result said the same thing
jul 05 - printer driver ate the afternoon; the fix turned out to be one setting

when you sit down to write, open the log and pick the newest line you still care about. title the post with the question the way it was asked - that phrasing is what gets typed into google.

your week->question log->next post->reader's search

your first three posts

the most recent thing you fixed or finished, with the numbers and photos.
the question people ask you most, answered start to finish.
the search that failed you, written the way you needed it.

to turn a log line into a post, write what happened in order: what you tried first, what failed, what worked, what it cost. that sequence is the whole outline.

publish in that order and the blog starts teaching you its own direction: whichever post pulls readers tells you what to write fourth.

faq

how many ideas do i need before starting?

three, and the list above just handed you them. after that the log does the work: readers ask questions once you publish, and those become posts.

what if my topic is already covered?

the topic might be; your results aren't. existing posts answer a generic reader, and yours answers the one you picked. nobody else has your numbers, your failures, or your fixes.

should i stick to one topic?

stick to one reader. a blog can range across subjects when the same person cares about all of them; that's the whole boundary.

what if i run out of ideas?

you run out only when you stop doing things. if the log goes quiet, the writing has drifted from what you actually do, and move one in how to start a blog is the correction.

open your notes app before this tab closes. make a note called "posts" and give it one line - the last thing you fixed. the blog just got its next post.