The other day I wrote that indie blogs are doing fine in response to what happened to blogs on Hacker News. Now that I let the grump out, let me share some of my methods for finding these blogs.

First thing first: don’t use Google. Indie blogs and personal websites are not usually optimized for SEO and Google’s shenanigans (and if they are, they can’t compete with big companies with a budget and marketing teams that do SEO all day). I use Kagi (work is Bing, which is not much better than Google, but that’s why it’s for work), and it’s excellent. Among other things, It has a “small web” toggle that allows you to reach places you won’t usually find with a regular search.

Indie blogs are like good spots in town. Sure, they’re on the map, but you need to ask the locals to point them out. In terms of indie blogs, this means other bloggers. The biggest contributions to my RSS feeds are from other blogs I follow, where one blogger mentioned another as a comment. I then do a quick test (more on that later) and if I find that the blog’s good, it gets added to my list.

Next, there are places on the net dedicated to indie blogs. I’m biased, and I love mine, so I’ll point to it first: Micro.blog. You can read more about Micro.blog in the About section of this blog, but the gist is that the guy who made it is all about the indie web and reviving the good old blog culture. The Discover part of Micro.blog is curated by a human, each post usually has a blog attached to it. Spend some time there, and you’ll probably find one or two places you’d like. Also, while I’m here, blogrolls. Micro.blog recently re-introduced those, and quite a few members of the Micro.blog community (this blog included) have some interesting links to suggest.

Speaking of blogrolls, some of those exist on the net. One of the famous ones is Ye Olde Blogroll. It is a bit too noisy for my taste and not organized as well as it could be, but put some time into it, and you’ll find something. There are a few more, but I can’t find them now, and I’m running low on coffee, so check @amerpie’s comment below. There’s also People and Blogs by Manu, which is quite nice, though it tends to be a bit too tech-leaning (more on this later) for my taste at times. Give it a try.

Indie social media is a thing, and you should use it. Mastodon is an excellent place to start because it’s pretty easy to build columns based on your interests. Then all you have to do is go fishing: once a week I find someone mentioning a post they write (or someone else’s post) in my topic-related columns.

The last tip I have is a bit of a catch. Write an indie blog yourself. If you’re reading this post and have read this far, you’re probably interested in indie blogs (I know my deductive reasoning is excellent, but thank you anyway), and the best way to find blogs is to become a blogger yourself. How is a different topic, but in a nutshell, start by writing something simple and mundane; never start with something big and “important” because you’ll get stuck in the not-good-enough cycle. Trust me, I got stuck in it many times.

This leads me to my two main guides for adding a blog to my RSS list. These might sound harsh, but hear me out. First, I try not to add web developers or other techies whose job is IT in general. This is because their blogs tend to be more about what they do for work and less about their lives (in general! This is not true for everyone, hence why this is a guide, not a rule), and their lives are actually what I’m after. I talk to enough IT folks every day the way it is. Second, I don’t generally read bloggers who write less than once a week unless they are very consistent and have been around for a long time; otherwise, chances are I won’t read more from them in a good while, if at all.

I hope this helps! Live well, and may your RSS list prosper.