The journal
Rowan Hale on building one product for twelve years, owning your platform, and making a living without renting your attention to an algorithm.
Essay · 12 minute read
Platforms rent you an audience. A website lets you keep one.
Every platform I ever built on eventually changed the rules. The one thing that never did was the website I owned. A long argument for the least exciting advice in the business.
This week I shipped the biggest update of the year and told almost no one. No countdown, no launch email, no posts. Just a changelog entry and a…
Search traffic to my essays dropped by almost half this year. Newsletter signups didn’t move. Here’s why I think that’s the whole story.
I once split-tested two versions of my About page. The polished one won. I switched back to the one that sounded like me anyway.
For the last month I've been cutting every letter by a third before sending it. It's painful. Some of my favorite sentences are gone. But the replies are…
Photo essay
Twelve months, one room, and the product that finally shipped.
Twelve months, one room, a spiral staircase, and the product that finally shipped. A photo essay.
