Today is the day we, the East and Southeast Asian people, conclude the wild 2022 and welcome a new Lunar Year 🐇🐈. If you do celebrate this holiday, I hope you are having a great time with family, and friends, along with some 🧧 too.
I started the blog at hungvu.tech at the beginning of 2022. It was a professional way for me to document my learning journey along with the possibilities of helping people facing the same question I had. Luckily, some of my articles were welcomed by the community. These gave me the honor to become one of the Top Authors on dev.to in 2022.
These successful articles (along with some others) also brought me unexpected opportunities, as in, some companies reached out and invited me to contribute to their platform.
... And, the sin
Towards the end of 2022, I fell into a trap of analytics and started producing more low-effort content to keep the numbers going. This went against my original idea when creating the blog. In combination with things going on in life, I decided to have a hiatus from November of last year. Just a few days ago, I decided to give a fresh start with a new article. Hopefully, things will go back to an original track this time.
Some other things I learned
- Owning your content: You should consider having your content associated with a personal brand (e.g., custom domain). This means you can cut tie with an association if needed. I know to some people, blogging on dev.to can even mean negative thing, as in you are associated with low-quality content. Personally, I don't believe so, and I still enjoy being part of a community here in a foreseeable future.
- Make a connection with your content: Try reaching out to certain tech companies which have publisher programs (e.g., you write about their product, for the technical audience). This improves your technical skills (learning new products) and writing skills (adhering to editor and company standards), having more reach, earning income, and finally making it a good piece to put on your professional portfolio. There are several reputable organizations publishing their articles here, and they can potentially give you a life-changing experience/opportunity down the road.
Thanks again for the support from you, the dev.to community. Your kind responses and supportive comments will continue to be my source of motivation in this year. It would be my pleasure to connect with you all!
hungvu.tech
Thank you for your great channel here on DEV.TO, Hung Vu. and may you and yours have an excellent 春节 and 繁荣的一年!