I started blogging long before AI became mainstream, but I'd say: totally worth it.

Re blockers:

- Novelty: I routinely search for very niche, "boring" information, and am disappointed by how few in-depth blogposts I find.

- “AI can explain most topics better than I can”. I doubt it! I rarely find current AI as valuable as a good blog post. It tends to be shallow and regress to the mean, and b/c of hallucinations it's untrustworthy, so a lot of time is wasted fact-checking.

- Fear of shipping: if it isn't relevant, nobody will read it (unless you're already famous)

Re questions:

- What made it worth it for you?

Clarifying my thoughts, connecting with strangers who think about the same things, the leverage "having a platform" produces (it opens a lot of doors), and gaining prestige in certain niches.

- What kinds of posts actually worked (for learning, career, network, opportunities)?

I don't think this is simple to answer until the heat death of the universe. Traffic stats is a very poor estimator of value delivered. Which posts I am most proud of, and how much traffic they got, are weakly correlated.

- Any practical format that lowers the bar (length, cadence, themes)?

Things that you are obsessed with. It's a tonne of work writing a good post, and sometimes you publish it and nobody cares, so it has to be intrinsically rewarding.

- If you were starting today, what would you do differently?

I don't know! Probably put less effort into trying to appear intelligent/impressive, which rarely works anyway.

These are my off-the-top thoughts based on over a decade of blogging.