Why ddesotto\raw

I tried WordPress. Now I’m here, which should be enough of a summary on how my WordPress experience went (spoiler alert, do not recommend).

My blog, bigdtalks.com, lasted one eternal year. While live, it hosted 15 posts with an average of 100 views/post, which is not bad, considering I had no prior experience. I built the site on Elementor (who calls that customizable?) and used BlueHost for buying the domain and hosting. Overall, the site came to a cost of around $160. You might be wondering how much the ROI was. Well, the answer is not that good.

At first I set up the site with the vision of having a possible source for passive income at the same time I shared my passion for acquiring knowledge. My idea was to use my already regular research sprees to then write articles on those topics. The perfect synergy. The problem is I became to focused on the former while forgetting the latter. A sidenote on building side-projects: focus on quality, and money will follow. Lesson learned 👍.

Having said that, those $160 were probably the best investment I made in 2021 (and yes, I also bought ETH 😃). I have learned a lot from bigdtalks.com. I tried to reach perfection when, first, I didn’t really know what perfection was, and second, I hadn’t even tested if my idea was good enough. So for this blog, first publish, then ask. Good thing I can extrapolate it to practically any aspect of life. Thanks to my “failed” blog, I have now become more confident on making mistakes. I hope I learned the right lesson.

Why Github Pages + Hugo

I have never been a Github groupie. Most of my projects went unnoticed to the general public, small scripts to automate basic tasks or to make use of a fancy algorithm I had learned about not so long ago. However, after I replaced IG and TikTok with Twitter, and having a small affection for HackerNews, where Github-related postings are a regular, hosting this website with GithubPages looked like an excellent way to make it both customizable and simple. Oh yes, and also very cheap 💸.

I decided on Hugo over Jekyll inspired by a fellow blogger (if I can call myself that) I found on HackerNews, Kris Machowski. I really liked the simplicity and layout of his site and decided to use it as “inspiration”. By the way, his content is incredible, so please check it out here. You won’t regret it.

Objectives

I have decided to set a list of objectives before a start as a way of setting waypoints to measure the success of this blog. Nothing complicated, but more of a test.

For 2022

• 20 blog posts
• 100 newsletter subscribers
• 100 visitors
• Building a useful relationship through the blog

Overall

• Featured on HackerNews Top5
• Having revenue
• Keep it running at least 5 years