How do you DEV.to?

I recently joined the DEV.to community and I am curious how each of you are using the platform. I'm guessing my story is similar to most of yours so this is a good place to talk about it.

I am a Software Developer with nearly 20 years of experience and I have been blogging for a long time. I find myself blogging less and less on my own platform these days and creating more videos. This is a little bit sad for me because I love to write, outside of coding it's one of my favorite things.

I have only posted a single article here and already love it. I have had so many comments and feedback and it just seems like a great place to connect with developers like myself.

So my question is this: For those of you who have personal websites and a blog, what is your strategy for posting new content. Are you posting here and on your blog? I heard Ben on the Indie Hackers Podcast talking about the problems with Medium. My biggest issue with Medium and other platforms is that you don't own your content.

When I post content on my blog I am not only trying to help people but I am trying to build my name. I'm looking to build my mailing list and when I do ask for money for paid content I hope my subscribers will know it's coming from a good place.

Should I post all of my content on both or do you determine that some content should go on the personal blog and maybe use this platform to test out some content first? I'm curious to know how all of you are using the platform.

Comments

[Juan F Gonzalez]

The one and only, the real Dan Vega, love your stuff mate! it was very helpful couple of years ago when I had to know Spring Boot for my work.

On to the question, I use dev.to mostly as reading and learning tool. Also to help with what I know and give feedback to others in their projects.

[Dan Vega]

Appreciate the kind words my friend!

[Elena.NET]

I use this site as a reading platform. I'm writing a few gamedev posts but not ready to publish yet!

[Steve Ziegler]

I’ve had similar cross posting thoughts about LinkedIn. From what I’ve read, cross posting is fine but do your blog post first. I definitely get more eyeballs here or on LinkedIn. I’ve got designs for some dev.to exclusive posts because the site deserves it. Scott Hanselman has a great post on owning your own words. But, I think you already understand that.

[Dan Vega]

Great feedback, Thanks for the response, Steve!

[Dan Vega]

You might not now and I was the same way early on. In the case of blogging and even open source, you are helping others but there is nothing wrong with turning that passion to help others into a business later on. Just something to think about.

[Burdette Lamar]

Reading:

• I review each dev.to/t/*my_tag*/latest daily (or nearly so), where my_tag is one of ruby github opensource markdown documentation.
• I review my feed at dev.to/ daily (or more often).

Writing:

• I post about the open-source software I put onto GitHub and RubyGems.
• I post about anything that comes to mind that I think may be interesting to others.
• I sometimes comment if I think it may shed light.

I don't think I've posted to my blog since joining DEV. I get a lot more views here.

I don't care who owns my writing -- it's open-source!