Committment/consistency is only half the battle.
What’s made this blog great is that you are able to express and clearly communicate your passion. People who are passionate about computers (and programming) read this blog and are touched.
I recommend taking your ad revenue and getting
a) a dedicated host with lots of bandwidth
b) Digg-like commment threading! 
This is good stuff, up to your usual standard, but I need a more nuts and bolts kind of post.
What software do I need?
Do I need to run my own web site?
You did a bit on how to handle the pictures, and that was good, but I have no idea where to actually start.
And by the way, I really, really hate HTML. So I need an editor that hides that awful stuff away from me.
Thanks.
Jeff,
I am one of the 100,000. Love your work.
Keep it up.
Colin
Keep it up! You always find ways of articulately explaining those little things about software/development that always creep up in the back of my head and start nagging me but that which I don’t have the time to organize and/or write a page about.
There’s no telling how many people I’ve turned on to your blog. It is great. But if you didn’t have a new post as often as you do, I would have stopped reading a long time ago. Cheers to years (of hard work).
Whew! I just had to go whip out a note on my blog. Thanks for motivating me.
Maybe I should start adding other subjects besides my running and bowling…may give me a bit more room for interesting topics.
I would attribute your blog success for the following reasons:
Good job, keep up the good work.
Congrats, Jeff. It is definitely true that blogging, like most things, is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Good ideas are a dime a dozen, but people who stick with the program and constantly and consistently try to improve are rare.
While you’re congratulating yourself on your blog, I’d like to add my thanks for all the informational topics and best of all, positive outlook and call-to-arms promotion. Coding Horror is like a Positivity Blog for programmers. Your featured post on Worse Than Failure is spot on. Your Elite 3 monitor club is superlative. Your pragmatism on programming communities is measured (but I wish you’d use more open-source software). Your controversial topics have depth. Your page design is refreshing (but where are the post categories?). Full content RSS feeds FTW. I also love your game topics. You are going to talk about your mice bindings, right?
You talk about writing blogs regularly improves your blog-ness and writing skill. Has it directly improved your programming skill?
I myself blog, but its more vanity/diary stuff. I am planning on starting a new blog focused on a particular piece of computing, not because I think I can educate, but because I am hoping to be educated by the commenters and the research. I have already made a list of topics to write about, so writer’s block be gone, at least for a while. After that I will fill the cracks with some meta-blogging and dreams of blogging for profit. :o
Jeff
Just looking back over your post archive, what happened between March and May 2004? There’s a “suspicious” gap in this period.
All in all it’s an excellent blog.
The problem that I have to trying to find something worth writing about… something that people will want to read.
I have several things that interest me, inside my brain is an annoying little man with a remote in hands and he’s constantly changing the channels.
The web site I posted was acquired back in '98 or 99 cant remember. But I got way before this hole blog thing started and my intent was to develop a webazine (for lack of a better word)
Things get in the way, and projects get pushed further and further back.
I know what you mean about being persistence, thats the key. Allot of folks do tend to give up way to early.
I do like to write, have been told I was good at it, but I’m still sitting on the preverbal fence.
So I think the first stage for me is to focus on what I want to write about. Which is way to hard for me, I’ll probably just bounce around between life, netowrking and pc games. to be continued…
BTW I just fund your site today, I was looking up info on the vista memory usage.
Thanks for you consistently interesting site. This latest article is (no surprise!) making me think about the benefits of blogging. I have an operational question. Would it be worth starting at group blogsite (like googles) or via one’s own domain? Is there a software framework you’re using that is especially good?
thanks
rob
I’ve finally broken down and started to blog again. Jeff, thanks for the inspiration and the motivation to keep a schedule.
It seems to me that it’s mathematically impossible under market capitalism that everyone makes a living through blogging; similar to a pyramid scheme - where does the money come from? From advertising corporations. Where does that money come from? From consumers. Where do their money come from? From blogging? There’s got to be lossage at several points in the iteration of this purported perpetuum mobile.
Best wishes to you, though, Jeff, because this is a good blog.
@Sunnan - Certainly, but not everyone reads Jeff’s blog. And a tiny proportion of those that do will be motivated enough to take this advice and follow it.
For that small proportion that actually does keep jabbing, shipping, and firing, the chance of “success” is high. Of course it helps to keep a reasonable definition of “success”.
Those who read this blog are in effect self-selected to have a higher chance of success.
One of your best posts in a while, good job.
Great post – this blog has inspired my own writing. A few thoughts
If you’re the typical geek, you have dozens of interesting, saved items in del.icio.us you could revisit for inspiration. Motivation, not ideas (or even time), is the scare resource for bloggers
In my experience, blogging helps answer these questions in a way pure “thinking” cannot.
Hi Jeff,
I just wanted to mention that a fail safe way to help yourself get noticed in the sea of blogs is to have a completely unique (to the internet) subject. I blog on a ghost town located near me, and so far, besides my info there is barely anything on that particular subject online. I get lots of hits and I’m number one on Google (plus I appear in probably 15 of the top 20 results, due to related pages and photo albums I have on the subject).
Thanks! -Sarah - Insan Art
Hi Jeff, those were really inspiring factors!
Thanks
but if we all had a blog, who would read them?
I only discovered your blog today from the CUSEC website - looking forward to hearing you speak. not sure if I’m going to go and start up a blog now or not…