How To Actually Run A Growing Science Blog

You don’t get to run a growing science blog everyday. It is indeed a privileged position to be in. At the same time, something of this nature does not happen by chance. It involves deliberate action and full intent to bear the responsibility for the said deliberate action.

I have been doing this “science blog” thing for over eight months now and have been seeing steady growth all along. Since this development involves more than what meets the eye, I thought I would document some of the considerations that go into running such a blog. So, here we are.

I will start with the story of why I started the science blog to begin with. Then, I will cover some of the essential factors (from my experience) for any blog to start growing. Following this, I will go into a whole host of considerations that actually go into running such a blog day-in and day-out. Finally, I will give a short heads-up on where the journey goes from here.

Perhaps you are interested in learning from my experiences to benefit your own adventures. Or perhaps you have been reading my essays long enough to be interested in learning more about this little journey. In either case, you are very welcome, and I am sure that you will find worthwhile insights in this essay. Without any further ado, let us begin.

This essay is supported by Generatebg

How it All Began

In the introduction, I mentioned that I have been doing this “science blog” thing for over eight months now. Having said this, I have been doing this “writing” thing for as long as I can remember. Writing is something that I have always cherished doing.

My work has also had a history of gaining interest from other folks as well. The reason I mention this is that there are a lot of people who seem to enjoy writing, but other people don’t enjoy reading their work (we will dive deeper into this issue a bit later). Without positive resonance, I would not have been able to sustain my interest to continue writing.

In 2017 (roughly five years from the time of writing this essay), I started a blog (not a technical one!) and wrote under a Pen name. At this point, I was aiming to achieve my dream of becoming a technical expert in a highly coveted industry. The blog was more of a hobby on the side; I mostly wrote about my philosophical musings and empirical observations, and published very sparsely.

The Path Less Trodden

This blog never really grew, but I had gained a reputation as a “deep thinker” among my limited audience of friends, family, and random internet strangers. In the meantime, guess what? I had achieved my dream of starting in a technical position in the said highly coveted industry (a story for another day, perhaps).

Have you ever heard of the adage “Never meet your heroes”? Well, I learnt this the hard way after a few years in my “dream” profession. Long story short, I realised that I had grown beyond my dream and decided to leave the lucrative life path laid ahead of me.

As I pondered upon how to make sense of my life at this point, I came up with a grand idea. I wrote down all of the topics and areas that interested me and decided to pursue a project in each one of them (eight in all). If that sounds absurd to you, it probably is; I am one of those absurdly ambitious types.

My idea here was that after six months, the projects that are worth pursuing further would prove themselves. I was essentially looking for an intersection between three factors:

1. My skills

2. My interests

3. Value created for the society by the project.

I was (still am and will be) obsessed with the notion that what I do MUST create value for fellow human beings. However, for my work to be sustainable, I should love doing it. Furthermore, I should be either skilled at it or I should be able to acquire the skills to be good at it reasonably quickly.

Lo and behold, after 6 months, two projects came up on top. One of them was my old blog. I had just chosen to double down on my writing, take my blog more seriously, and publish regularly.

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Why Did I Start a Science Blog?

Remember that I told you that something of this nature does not happen by chance. Well, I lied! But before you flip out on me, let me explain. Until this point, my writing and my technical work had never coincided in my life.

I know what you might be thinking.

“Isn’t it an obvious overlap?”

For the love of blogs, this had never occurred to me! As I focussed on writing more regularly, it just happened to be the case that I wrote about something technical. This topic was so mundanely straightforward for me that I think I put an hour’s worth of effort into it.

To my surprise, it got positive responses from a lot of people. I had never had a response on this scale until this point. From this point on, the more I focussed on sharing my technical knowledge/interests, the more my blog grew. In a way, chance was involved; I cannot deny that.

But two other factors played a much bigger role:

1. My obsession with creating value for fellow human beings.

2. My goal to publish regularly.

One would do well not to underestimate the power of committing to publishing regularly. I first came across this philosophy from the work done by Seth Godin. But I decided to commit based on my own empirical life experiences.

As a reader, one need not appreciate this philosophy. But effective writers know this all too well. They need not even know each other deeply. But they nod in approval when they see a fellow writer publish regularly. I am sure that my friend Avi Kotzer can relate to this as well.

How Do You Run a Growing Science Blog?

We now have a promising science blog on our hands. How do we grow it? Well, here is my secret five-step process to achieving this goal:

1. Just

2. Kidding

3. I never aimed

4. To grow

5. The damn thing!

No seriously, I never focussed on growing the blog. I was (and am) focused on one thing only: creating value for fellow human beings!

I am a deeply curious person and consider myself a student of life. This is also the reason why I do not go too much into my technical background or qualifications. They are irrelevant in the context of learning. As I learn and research topics that interest me, I share them through my writing. Sometimes other people find my writing useful/interesting, and sometimes, they don’t.

Experience does matter, though. By repeating the success/failure cycles often enough, my responsibility is to try and write about scientific topics that I think people are likely to benefit from. I can read and learn about anything I wish, but my writing has to solve problems for fellow human beings. With that, we arrive at a key consideration to running a growing science blog.

Key Considerations to Run a Growing Science Blog

So far, we have established one thing: I never aimed to grow the blog. I just focussed on creating value for fellow human beings, and the blog started growing. As the bog grows, I am reacting to it. And react, I must!

Solving Problems, Having Conversations, and Scaling Issues

I treat each essay I publish as a product. In this sense, like any other product, each of my essays is aimed at solving a problem or a bunch of problems I deem worthy of solving. Solving problems equals creating value.

As users would interact with any other product, readers (like you) interact with my products (essays). Sometimes the interactions are positive, and sometimes, not so positive. Either way, I treat my writing as a form of conversation; I put myself on an eye-to-eye level with the reader.

At the beginning of the essay, I mentioned that a lot of writers tend to enjoy writing but others don’t enjoy reading their work. This is because (in my opinion) their writing is like a one-way conversation. Not many folks would be interested in having conversations with someone who keeps talking without pausing to listen to their conversational partner.

I try as much as possible to engage my readers in conversations explicitly in the comments section. However, due to my “regular publishing” schedule, the number of essays keeps increasing by the day. Consequently, the number of comments grows too.

In the business world, older products don’t receive as much support from the manufacturer as the newer releases do. I can totally relate to this as I find myself scampering for time to respond to comments as much as possible.

Inevitably, I end up favouring my most recent essays in favour of the older ones. The older ones are also more likely to have rounded conversations already in the comments section.

Before you judge me, I am not saying that what I am doing is right. I am a one-man show; my readers are many. A growing blog is not a good thing in this context. I am struggling to keep up with the sheer number of comments that come in. At the same time, I would like to engage in productive conversations as much as possible.

If you have suggestions or solutions for this challenge of mine, do let me know in the comments section. For now, let us move on to other important considerations.

Responsibility and Commitment towards Scientific Rigour and Simplicity

I come from a scientific background (one of the very few instances where I must refer to my background, unfortunately). So, I value scientific rigour and correctness. But alas! I am a human being; I make mistakes.

Since I am a one-man show, proof-reading from a second pair of eyes is a luxury that I currently do not have. So, often, I am at the mercy of my patient readers. As some of you (readers) point out my mistakes, I do my best to correct them and ensure that the information I share is as correct as possible.

Regardless of whether my work is scientifically correct or not, one of the ways I create value is via my commitment to ensuring scientific rigour and correctness.

At the same time, another strong way in which I create value is via my commitment to simplicity. If people need technical information, they can always refer to text books or science journals. But as a free entity, I am not bound by the archaic rules for textbooks or science journals. I am free to communicate as simply as possible to my readers.

The bigger problem I try to solve, then, is to express scientific knowledge as simply as possible whilst not compromising on scientific rigour at the same time. Anyone who has tried this would know that it is no easy task, and it is not possible to please everyone all the time.

Hacking Attempts and Technical Challenges

“Run a growing science blog!”, they said. “It will be fun!”, they said. But you see, growth has two sides to it. Growth means more website visitors. But growth also means increased and more sophisticated hacking attempts.

As the blog grows, more and more subscribers entrust me with their email addresses and other data. It is then my responsibility to protect all of this information, let alone the website that I worked hard to create and maintain.

I currently use the WordPress stack, and it turns out that the WordPress REST-API has some holes in it; the kind of holes that hackers poke into. The good news is that I have managed to hold the fort through all these wicked attempts.

After losing a bit of sleep over hot-fixing security issues, I resorted to some efficient WordPress-security-plugins. But these plugins also slow the website down. Do you know what we are NOT doing by slowing a website down? That’s right, we are not creating value.

So, I am now learning PHP, JavaScript, and whatever else is necessary to build my own secure and fast website from scratch. I don’t necessarily enjoy doing this, but it is a valid need. If you have better suggestions for my technical issues and/or have expertise in this area, do get in touch; I’d be grateful.

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What Does it Mean to Run a Growing science blog?

Here is a quick summary of what I have done so far to arrive at this point, and what it means to run such a growing science blog:

1. Publish regularly.

2. Focus on creating value instead of focusing on growth.

3. Commitment to the “simplest” possible scientific content whilst not compromising on scientific rigour and correctness at the same time.

4. Growth makes engaging with readers in the comments section very challenging.

5. Growth attracts unwanted attention in the form of hackers and other technical difficulties.

All this said and done, I have not covered areas such as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and Social Media. Even though I am actively working on these aspects, I feel that I currently do not have sufficient expertise to offer any value to you (the reader).

Obviously, I haven’t solved all of the challenges here. I am doing my best to solve them on the fly.

Now that we have covered what it means to run a growing blog, I’ll give you a quick heads-up on where we are headed next.

Where is this Journey Headed?

Running a science blog indeed takes a lot of effort and commitment. But you might not be entirely surprised to know that I work on stuff other than the blog. While writing is something I cherish doing, building stuff is what truly turns me on and where I see the greatest potential to create value for others.

My long term vision with the blog is to make conventionally difficult or obscure science topics easily accessible to interested folks out there. Having said this, I am taking this journey one day at a time.

As the blog continues to grow, new challenges pop up. I am doing my best to solve them whilst keeping the ship pointed in the right direction at the same time.

If you have read this far, I humbly thank you for your patience and interest in reading what I had to say. Should you have any feedback or suggestions, I’m all ears; the comments section is just a click/tap away!

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Further reading that might interest you: Are We Living In A Simulation? and How Easy Is It Really To Predict The Future?

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