: Re: Pros and Cons: A blog to get feedback As a creative writer in my free time, I sometime suffer from a lack of feedback. To get some impressions on what I've written, I either have to ask

@Bryan361

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Pro's:

It gives you feedback. Any feedback can help you to improve your work, if you are able to filter it properly.
It gives you exposure and generates hype for your work. It allows you to build an audience even before your work is finished.
It prevents you from procrastinating. If you don't write anything for weeks, there will be a public record of your laziness. This can be a great motivator to force yourself to write regularly (or at least post an excuse why you didn't publish any new material this week).

Con's:

Posting too much might affect your ability to monetize your work. Why would I buy your book when I can read most of it on your blog for free? So think carefully what you publish as free samples on your blog and what you keep behind a paywall.
Feedback can be misleading. People might complain about things which only bother them, but are irrelevant or even positive for most of your primary target demographic. Trying to appeal to everyone will result in a work which appeals to no one.
Feedback can be demoralizing. There will be people who just bash your work without offering anything useful. The best you can do about that is ignore it and move on. The worst you can do is to feed the trolls and start a discussion with them which takes up time and energy you could spend on improving your work or interact with those people who deserve it. But taking the bait is a temptation which is hard to resist.
In the worst case, you might not get any feedback at all. You spend a lot of time on setting up your blog and then get no attention at all except from the occasional spam bot. To get people to read your blog, they need to know it exists. That means you need to spend resources to advertise it. Advertise it too obnoxiously, and you will turn people against you. Getting too obsessed with the success of your blog might blind you from what purpose it is actually supposed to fulfill.

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