Why I Built My Own Blog (And Spent 7 Hours Doing It)

For the past year and a half, I wrote on Medium. It was easy, convenient, and came with a built-in audience. But I wasn’t getting many readers, and something felt off. So recently, with some time on my hands and a willingness to experiment, I migrated my blog to a self-hosted setup. It took me 7+ hours, but it was worth it.

So why spend 7+ hours building a blog from scratch when sticking with Medium or Substack would have been easier?

Two main reasons:

1. Ownership

You’re not dependent on a platform’s algorithm, paywall policy, or design choices. You own your content and infrastructure, which opens the door to customization in two key ways:

• First, SEO/AEO and Analytics. With more control, you can optimize how search engines and AI chatbots find your content, and get clearer insights into how your audience interacts with it.
• Second, design. Your blog is your personal brand. You can style it accordingly.

2. Learning

I am not a SWE, I couldn’t have done this without AI coding agents. The agents do more than building though they question your thinking, they explain the concepts and they provide options, This means you understand how all the pieces of a seemingly simple blog actually work together, how they might fail, and how to maintain them.

My Stack for the build

One bonus: I’m saving $50+ annually by not paying for a pro subscription (like Ghost) or domain connection fees (like Medium or Substack) with this.

Final Thoughts

I don’t know if this will increase my readership, or if I’ll regret the maintenance burden, or if I should have chosen something like self-hosted Ghost or WordPress instead.

What I do know is that the time I spent building this was enlightening, both technically and creatively. It was a good exercise in thinking through how I want to represent my work.