Starting a Data Science blog on Medium was one of the best decisions I have made in my life. It up-skilled me in my career, opened many opportunities, and even made me some money.
Technical writing and blogging are not just valuable skills; they’re powerful tools that can elevate your career, especially for data scientists who often need to communicate complex ideas to various people with different technical skills.
That’s why in this article, I will explain what technical writing is, why you should do it, and how you can start your tech blog today!
Note: You can also watch the video version of this post on my Youtube channel:
What Is Technical Writing/Blogging?
Put simply, technical writing is the process of writing tutorials or explainers on technical subjects like maths or coding. You basically educate and teach audiences complex and challenging topics in a digestible way.
For example, you can write about how to use Pandas in Python, how a machine-learning algorithm works or what ChatGPT is doing under the hood. The detail and complexity you go into is up to you, but the goal is to explain the topic as clearly as possible to a desired or specified target audience.
Technical writing and blogging are very similar but slightly different if we are being pedantic. The former is more of a formal full-time profession, whereas the latter is a more hobbyist, relaxed approach. However, at their heart, they are both trying to do the same thing of explaining technical topics.
That’s also not to say that you can’t earn a full-time income from tech blogs or online writing; many writers earn a living wage from their posts.
One of the best examples is The PyCoach, who consistently made over $5,000 per month in 2022. Obviously, you shouldn’t expect this and he is clearly an anomaly but it does show you that writing articles can be very lucrative if thats what you are after.
Why Have A Blog?
What’s the point of a blog? Well, there are so many reasons, both altruistic and selfish if we are being completely honest.
From the pure altruistic perspective:
- You likely have specialist knowledge in a particular tech area that others may benefit from learning from you.
- You can help people who want to get a job in your field by advising them on the best way to do so and on the resources they may need.
On the more selfish side:
- Writing articles shows your interest and abilities in a field and will make you stand out to potential employers and recruiters.
- It helps you learn new skills and topics that can advance your career. By writing posts, you are basically using the Feynman technique as you improve your understanding by teaching others.
- You can earn some money on the side to supplement your full-time income and maybe even exceed it in some cases.
A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.
But, no matter your reason, it is clear that starting a blog is a very low risk for a potential very high award, and the pros clearly outweigh the cons.
If you are still on the fence, I encourage you to read "Show Your Work!" by Austin Kleon. After reading this book, I promise you will run straight to your computer and start writing something!
How To Start?
Choose Your Niche
When I started my blog, I was just about to start my first job as a data scientist. Naturally, I began writing articles on data, maths, statistics, and AI, all areas relevant to my role and were things I wanted to learn more about.
I was far from an expert and I hadn’t even started the job when I wrote my first article! However, I took the "learn in public" approach to documenting my learning as I progressed in my career.
Recently, I pivoted to writing more career advice articles, but that’s only after working in the field for nearly three years.
You can literally write about anything, but I recommend choosing a niche that interests you or that you have experience in. Then, decide whether you want to give advice or document your journey. Of course, you can do both, depending on your experience and what stage you are at in your career.
You can find my first article below. It’s not my best work, but we all start from somewhere!
Platform
After you have decided on your niche, it’s time to choose a platform for your writing.
One of the most successful online writers, Nicolas Cole, said in one of his posts:
Your blog has no distribution flywheel.
A blog is just a website. So the big question is, how are people going to find out your website exists?
And then goes on to say:
Which is why you are so much better off starting your digital writing journey by writing on social platforms.
Quora
Medium
Basically, anywhere readers already are.
Why You Shouldn’t Start A Blog (And Where You Should Write Instead)
To expand on this, when starting your tech blog, writing on your personal website is not a good idea for someone with no current audience. The main reason is that it is tough to gain traction, as search engines need to index your site higher than other, more established websites.
Writing on platforms like Medium or Quora will likely generate more traffic to your blog as they already have a large audience on the platform, and their URLs rank highly on SEO.
So, what platforms should you choose?
If you don’t want to write complete articles just yet, X/Twitter and LinkedIn are your best bet. They have a massive tech community with an established audience.
There are a couple of options for full blog posts, but the main two are Medium or Hashnode for tech articles. Hashnode is more on the tech side and a bit more developer-friendly. Still, in my opinion, Medium is much better as it has lower friction and much better distribution channels and has one of the most biggest communities in Towards Data Science.
I have been writing on Medium for nearly three years now, and it is truly amazing. I really recommend starting here.
Plan Your Articles
After we have chosen our niche and platform, it’s time to plan our posts!
In general, for tech blogging, I think there are three main types of posts you can create from my experience:
- Career advice – As the name says, give advice on how to break into the industry. These include how to become a software engineer, tech interview advice, the best degree to get a job as a data scientist, etc.
- Technical breakdowns – Create tutorials of things you already know how to do. These could include how to deploy a website, use git, find the best cloud platform provider, etc.
- Document learning – Choose something you want to learn, study it and then write about it to solidify your understanding. This is an example of the Feynman technique were you build your understanding through teaching.
Honestly, it doesn’t matter which one you choose; I have done all of them in the past, and they can all make for compelling reads.
Career advice and technical breakdowns are more straightforward as you already know what you are writing about. To document your learning, you must learn new things simultaneously, so the process takes longer. However, it comes with the added benefit of improving your existing knowledge.
Repeat & Refine
Regardless of your path, you will quickly realise that tech blogging is an example of an infinite game; there is no end destination. You keep playing forever because it’s fun and you enjoy it.
I plan on doing a separate article on how to grow your blog if that interests you. However, the whole growth process generally boils down to consistency and slowly improving with each article. I know that’s obvious, but it is the truth, there is no secret.
Although simply growing should not necessarily be your sole goal, for my blog, I am not trying to get it to "blow up" but to use it as a tool to learn data science and gain a deeper understanding. I feel this is way more invaluable in the long run than trying to go "viral."
Summary & Further Thoughts
Starting this data science blog was indeed one of the best decisions I have ever made. I became a better data scientist, networked with amazing people, and earned some money. Starting a blog is pretty straightforward, and you can literally write about anything from career advice to documenting your learning journey. I recommend starting here on Medium as it’s a terrific platform with a large tech community you can access right from the beginning.
Another Thing!
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