Should I use my personal website as a blog?
Yes.
I’ll even take it a step further: the main focus of your personal website should be your blog.
Good personal websites clearly explain who you are and what you do.
Great personal websites clearly explain who you are, what you do — and how your work can benefit others.
Your blog is the best way to share your story, your experiences, and your advice.
So, if you want to create the most value for readers, your blog is your primary tool.
Nat Eliason has an awesome personal website. And it’s mostly a blog.
He talks about the importance of starting a personal website and writing a blog:
It doesn’t matter what field you’re in, whether or not you want to be an entrepreneur, or whether or not you ever intend to make money from it. A well-developed site is your resume, your real estate, your time machine, and your second brain. It helps anyone learn more about you, how you think, and why they should care. And for you, it helps clarify your thoughts, share what you know, and build a reputation.
A personal website without a blog is like car without an engine.
How do you find niches?
Imagine you run a Yoga studio.
You’re competing against hundreds of other yoga studios.
You look the same as all of the other yoga studios.
Unless, that is, you find a niche.
A niche is a small, specialized section of the population.
If you’re running a yoga studio, what problem do you solve?
You help people become more flexible and improve their health & well-being.
If you’re running a yoga studio, what small, specialized section of the population wants to be more flexible and improve their health & well being?
- Seniors?
- Office workers?
- Stiff guys?
All of these are niches — small, specialized sections of the population.
And they are relevant to your business because they need your product more than most.
You could even call your yoga studio “Yoga for Stiff Guys.”
If a stiff guy saw the name of your studio, a lightbulb would go off in their head.
They would think “that’s me!”
If they feel as though your product was made just for them, they are much more likely to take interest — and eventually, buy.
Finding a niche — a small, specialized section of the population — makes your marketing much easier.
It creates the “that’s me!” effect.
Whenever you can create the “that’s me!” effect, you’ll have a much easier time selling your product.
Why is it important to have a personal online presence?
What if you could create a clone of yourself to do your work for you?
You can.
That’s what your personal online presence can do for you.
Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.
An army of robots is freely available – it’s just packed in data centers for heat and space efficiency. Use it.
—Naval Ravikant, How To Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky)
Your personal online presence is the best way to leverage your thinking:
- Write something once, communicate with an infinite amount of people
- Record something once, show it to an infinite amount of people
- Build something once, sell it to an infinite amount of people
In the words of Warren Buffet:
“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”
So it’s important to have a personal online presence — if you don’t want to work until you die.
What is the worst way to find clients?
Behold! The 7-deadly sins of finding clients:
- Cold-calling
- Waiting for clients to come to you
- Refusing to speak with potential clients
- Sending out mass, non-personalized cold-emails
- Claiming that anyone in any industry can be your client
- Not providing examples of how you’ve helped people like them
- Sending LinkedIn connection requests to clients with no context
If you don’t do these— and instead, focus on productive methods— you won’t have a problem finding clients.