I've been doing self-media for 5 years, accumulating 300k+ followers across all platforms, and used dozens of platforms: 85 Self-Media Platforms and Monetization Guide (Strongly Recommended)

Today I'm sharing from a programmer's perspective which platforms are suitable for programmers to write.

Writing Goals and Principles

What's the point of programmers writing articles? Let me share my writing gains:

  • Making money. This is the most direct gain. Once you have followers, monetization opportunities will come to you.
  • Self-improvement. Whether writing technical articles or stories about internet entrepreneurs, creation requires a lot of reading and thinking beforehand. Long-term it's hard not to improve.
  • Career. I have many examples around me who created influence through self-media and then got career promotions.

Other writing principles:

  • Don't harvest at the expense of others. People who want to make money by harvesting, do me a favor: block me.
  • Content should be vertical, don't blindly chase hotspots. Vertical means focusing on one direction to write about.
  • Keep improving writing skills. Whether graphics or short videos, the core of good content is good writing skills. This requires continuous refinement without天赋.

Platform Classification

I divide self-media platforms suitable for programmers into 4 major categories:

  • A Professional platforms: CSDN, Juejin, Tencent Cloud/Huawei Cloud/Alibaba Cloud community, 51CTO, Open China, infoQ
  • B Traditional platforms: WeChat official accounts, Weibo, Zhihu
  • C Niche platforms: Baijiahao, Dayuhao,企鹅号, NetEase, Sohu
  • D Short video platforms: Xiaohongshu, B站, Douyin, Kuaishou

My attitude toward these 4 categories: Use Tencent Cloud and official account as main, automatically sync after opening accounts on other platforms.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Below are advantages and disadvantages of several platforms:

Official Account

  • Advantages: Highest monetization efficiency. Whether user purchasing power or merchant ad placement willingness, both are the highest.
  • Disadvantages: Hardest to get traffic. Because official accounts are closed traffic pools, no followers means no traffic, and no traffic means even fewer followers. Very hard for beginners, but fortunately official accounts recently changed traffic rules, giving beginners occasional traffic opportunities.

CSDN

Many programmers choose CSDN as their writing platform, but I personally don't recommend it, for a unique reason: basically no activities. As a tech platform not lacking traffic, CSDN basically doesn't care about writers' rights, cares more about advertisers. So you can post there, but no need to make it your main position.

Tencent Cloud

In my heart, highest quality tech platform, many activities and capable operations staff.

Of course there's one fatal downside: basically not indexed by Baidu, poor traffic.

Xiaohongshu

Although a short video platform, graphic content is actually very popular on Xiaohongshu.

The downside is it's not a tech platform, not suitable for posting very professional content.

Wrapping Up

My account name on all platforms is programmer Wan Feng, been updating for 5 years. I have experience in programmers doing self-media. Welcome friends who want to make money through self-media to add my WeChat and chat for 5 cents. 👇

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Programmer Wan Feng focuses on AI programming training,小白看完他和图灵社区合作的教程《30讲 · AI编程训练营》就能上手做AI项目。

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