alt Hacker Newsyou said: "...from someone who's been publishing on the internet for decades: no one will visit your website"
This is false.
It's more accurate to say that "no one will visit your website if you do not properly setup a distribution ecosystem".
It's hard work. But it works. All of my companies have been built by writing online --> distribution --> people finding my/our stuff.
Your experience of 'doing it for decades' reveals that publishing, in of itself, does nothing. And if all people do is publish (without the distribution engine), then, I agree it's a waste of time.
I write 1 hour per day. I spend about 2 hours working on distribution. Sometimes, I spend 4 hours on distribution.
Replies
I write 1-2 hours a day but I dont spend anywhere near that much time on distribution so this is a learning opportunity... would be great if you could help me understand the activities/tasks you undertake? What do you do to spend the 2 - 4 hours on distribution? Is this daily? Or per task/article??
I publish links to my new articles on Reddit , sometimes on Twitter. That’s enough for my posts to get to lots of people, sometimes. And when it happens, Google indexes it and it becomes one of the first links about the topics I covered. And people repost it later in other media like Mastodon, HN etc.
I don’t get how someone can have used the internet for decades and not know how this all works!