Should You Write a Tech Blog? Getting Started, Benefits, and Costs
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Table Of Contents
This article explores whether engineers should write tech blogs, how to get started, and the benefits and costs, all based on my own experiences.
Should You Write a Tech Blog?
In my view, writing a tech blog is beneficial but not essential.
It depends on your purpose for writing.
For example, if your goal is to support your company’s engineer recruitment or to gain new projects, a tech blog could be effective.
On the other hand, if your primary goal is to generate revenue, it might not be as effective, and focusing on project work may offer a better return on investment.
For me, it was just right to approach it as a hobby—continuing to write articles while gradually building my knowledge of the web along the way.
Benefits of Writing a Tech Blog
Helping Others
- Serves as a personal memo (works as a reminder)
- Helps others solve problems
- Can lead to revenue or project opportunities
Writing down things you’ve worked on serves as a reminder for later; it’s surprisingly helpful to revisit your own articles when you need to re-implement something.
For example, it’s useful to record commands used in infrastructure setup or settings when configuring an external service, especially for tasks you don't do frequently.
While you could save personal notes in apps like Notion, formalizing them into blog articles makes them easier to understand later, and helps others solve similar issues.
Start by writing for yourself, and over time, you'll naturally end up helping others too.
Building Web Knowledge
You gain knowledge on tools like:
- Analytics
- Search Console
These tools are essential for any service. Learning how to set them up and analyze data can be very beneficial.
You’ll pick up these skills as you manage your blog, which is quite different from just posting tech articles on external platforms.
Freedom to Experiment with Your Media
Owning your media means you can experiment freely.
For instance, you can test if rewriting articles makes a difference or how quickly a title change reflects in searches.
In a corporate setting, you’d likely need to keep detailed change logs in spreadsheets, but on your own site, you can experiment and try things without such restrictions.
Costs of Running a Tech Blog
Running a tech blog generally involves these two costs:
- Domain registration (e.g., around ¥1 ~ ¥1,500 per year)
- Server costs (e.g., ¥400 ~ ¥2,000 per month)
For example, on ConoHa WING, with a 3-year contract at the time of writing, you can secure a domain and pay monthly server fees, with one custom domain free.
Some may find this affordable, while others may feel it’s too much. Either way, the expense is reasonable if used to gain valuable experience.
While it takes significant traffic to break even, it's best to forget about revenue at first and focus on creating content.
Cost-Saving Method: Operating Without a Rental Server
You can skip renting a server by only purchasing a custom domain.
For just a custom domain, you might pay as little as ¥1 for the first year, with renewal fees costing a few thousand yen annually.
Currently, I have two domains, .jp and .com, and the annual costs are shown below.
Costs vary depending on whether the domain ends in .com or .jp, and initial-year prices are often lower.
I run this tech blog with a custom domain and a static site hosting service.
I use Netlify (https://www.netlify.com/) and Vercel (https://vercel.com/).
These services may charge based on build times.
For a blog where content grows gradually, it’s challenging to exceed free limits, and it could be fun to aim to stay within them initially.
My site is still within the free limits.
How to Write a Tech Blog
Write About What Interests You
Write about things like:
- Challenges you've tackled
- Problems that took hours to solve
- Tasks you might repeat later
Write what you want to write about. Even if you’re a beginner, don’t be shy to share your experiences.
Be Intentional with Titles
A well-crafted title greatly increases traffic.
For tech blogs, keep it simple and include terms that clearly explain the article's purpose and match typical search queries.
- "How to Install ○○ (package name)"
- "How to Fix ○○ (error message)"
Writing Conclusion-First Is Fine
There's a myth among some SEO experts that starting with the conclusion is bad because it lowers page stay time.
However, you can rank well even with a conclusion-first structure, and here’s a video explaining that page stay time doesn’t impact ranking:
It’s also unclear how privacy-focused Google would even track time on external sites. (What about sites not using Analytics or browsers other than Google Chrome?)
I believe Google mainly considers:
- Click-through rate for impressions
- Whether users return to search results and browse other sites
Just focus on these two points when creating content.
Instead of artificially inflating article length to increase stay time, prioritize answering the search intent efficiently.
You can still attract traffic with conclusion-first articles.
Example of a conclusion-first article: How to Implement a Back Button in Vue.js with VueRouter
Getting Started with a Tech Blog
Using a Rental Server (e.g., ConoHa WING)
Pros of a Rental Server
- Easy setup to start immediately
- Focus on writing content
- Intuitive for writing with WordPress
- Gain knowledge of WordPress
These benefits make it different from hosting services.
Cons of a Rental Server
- Higher costs compared to hosting services with a custom domain
Why Use ConoHa WING
I use ConoHa WING for media other than my tech blog.
I chose ConoHa WING because:
- Fast loading speed
- User-friendly management interface
- Affordable blog layout templates
With all necessary features, it’s very user-friendly.
Is a Rental Server Suitable for Engineer Blogs?
Yes.
WordPress makes it easy to write articles and focus on content creation.
WordPress plugins also allow you to add code blocks and improve readability.
How to Start a Blog on a Rental Server
How to Start WordPress in 10 Minutes: A Quick and Easy Guide
Using a Custom Domain with Hosting Services (Challenging)
Pros of Custom Domain and Hosting Services
- Lower ongoing costs after setup
- Faster loading with cache and CDN
- Write in Markdown
- Learn frameworks like Gatsby.js
- Learn about hosting services like Vercel
- Use GitHub for secure and backed-up article management
Cons of Custom Domain and Hosting Services
- Setup can be challenging
How to Start a Blog with Custom Domain and Hosting Services
Create a Blog with Gatsby and Netlify
How to Purchase a Domain
Other Options
If your main goal is to write tech articles, it might be better to post on a specialized tech article site.
- zenn(https://zenn.dev/)
- Qiita(https://qiita.com/)
Other options include note(https://note.com/).
I think Hatena Blog is the least suitable option for this purpose.
Revenue Options
The main revenue source will likely be Google AdSense.
Generally, the rate per 1 page view (PV) is around ¥0.1 to ¥0.2.
Other options include selling goods through Amazon Associates or selling products via ASPs, but with "How-To" articles, product sales can’t be highly anticipated. Therefore, revenue methods like Google AdSense, which are based on impressions, are likely to be the primary sources.
Conclusion
That’s it.
The best outcome from starting my tech blog has been gaining SEO knowledge.
Many people talk about surface-level SEO techniques, but in reality, if you deepen your knowledge in your field and carefully write about what you’ve actually tried, people will read it.
Nowadays, the concept of E-EAT (where “Experience” comes first) means that content based on the author’s actual experiences tends to perform well.
If you’d like more information on how to express or validate this in articles, feel free to contact me. I can provide materials tailored for corporate inquiries.
Thank you for reading.
