You Should Start a Blog Now (or Later)

Lofty inspirational version:

You should start a blog so you start writing your thoughts down into words that form sentences that become paragraphs that become blog posts that get shared and inspire someone else to think differently, understand your point of view, or gain a whole new perspective on the world.

I believe writing and sharing what you've written with the world helps you understand yourself, could land you a new job, might cause disagreement with another human that you have to work out how to resolve, or unlock parts of your brain you didn't know you had spinning.

Normal levels of inspiration version:

You should write more because I think it'd be cool to read the thoughts you're having.

How to Start Your Blog Now in 2025 (or 2026 if you're in the future!)

There are a hundred ways to type into your computer or phone and have them appear on the internet. I'm going to recommend two right now, but either will work just fine. And thanks to fancy words like "data portability", you can change to a different way of publishing words on the internet if you decide to later.

It really comes down to which animal you prefer: a pika or a bear?

Bear - https://bearblog.dev

Hit the signup page, fill in your title, subdomain, and some text describing your blog, and you're ready to blog. It's free to start and only $6USD/month or $59USD/year if you want a custom domain (i.e. yourcoolname.com), publish more blogs, media uploading, email subscriptions, and showing up in the Bear Discovery feed.

What Bear looks like:

Examples of Bear in action:

• Check out my fancy blog post from back in 2022 when I first tried out Bear.
• A better example with a lot more posts is the creator of Bear, Herman Martinus' blog.
• BinaryDigit, internet friend who was on my YouTube channel and fun Twitch streamer, also uses Bear for her blog. I think her site is where I first saw someone using Bear.

Pika - https://pika.page

Hit their signup page, pick out a title, subdomain, preferred blog layout, an email address and password, where you heard about Pika (me?), click the nice big "Create my Pika blog" button, and you're blogging! Pika is free to start and only $6USD/month or $60USD/year if you want more than 50 blog posts, unlimited pages & guestbook entires, custom domain (i.e. yourcoolname.com), and newsletter subscribers.

What Pika looks like:

Examples of Pika in action:

• Check out my Pika blog post from Jan, 2025
• One of the founder's of Pika, Barry Hess, blogs pretty regularly.
• A blogger I like reading, Annie Mueller, also uses Pika for her blog. I think she was the one who pointed me to Pika in the first place.

But Don't I Blog with Ghost? Why Not Ghost?

I do use Ghost to host my blog. I have no complaints for what I use it for, other than it's gotten way more expensive now than when I signed up for it. Ghost's cheapest plan is $15USD/month ($180USD/year) with no free plan. I signed up when it was $9USD/month ($108USD/year). If I had to sign up for Ghost today, I wouldn't have. I would've picked something like Pika, Bear, or stayed on my Eleventy based blog for "free".

Which isn't a knock against Ghost. I do think it's a great platform that is a great choice for anyone trying to build a business or brand around readers and an audience for your writing. It's priced very competitively for that kind of blogger or website.

But for you, dear reader—who really needs to start a blog sometime soon—I really recommend you check out Pika or Bear.

To quote Chris Coyier, fellow Chris and even bigger proponent of the power of blogging:

This one is for all my homies that don’t have big thoughtsall the time.
This one is for all you who go to work, do a good job, then go home and forget about it.
This one is for all y’all who are too busy doing stuff to blog about it.
Nah.
You’ve got a brain. Lemme hear that thing go. Write some words at a URL.

...which I found because I was initially going to use a quote from this post on Chris' blog which linked to this post on Rach Smith's blog where she has an even cooler reason to start blogging:

Then my bossfriend Chris started posting on his blog on almost a daily basis. Some posts are quite short and appear to be about whatever random thought comes to his mind. The coolest thing about it is that even though I have worked with Chris for over 6 years, I am still learning things about him via his blog.

Bingo. Write some words at a URL (website address) and let us learn things about you.

And if this very post motivates or inspires you to start a blog of your own (or restart your old blog), please drop a comment below or email me with your blog's website address so I can read it.

I'm going to pour another cup of coffee and I'm gonna need some words that form sentences that become paragraphs that become blog posts to read when I come back.