> Running a blog on your own domain & infra costs at least $10.000 per year in time, effort etc.
You mean $10 right? Because that’s about how much I pay for my domain a year and I don’t spend a dime more. I mean, even with Medium you have to take the time to write and format your articles…
Multiply the time you spent on setting up your favorite blog engine by your hourly rate. It's not $10, though likely not $10k, even if you choose self-hosted WordPress.
I think you can get set up with a domain and static site generator and run it through something like GitHub pages in an hour or two. I personally spent a lot of time writing up a bunch of Jekyll templates and Sass because I have strong NIH and want full control over my website, but for those who don't care (presumably which includes those using Medium) you can get up and going with zero ongoing overhead with just the default themes and stuff.
This guy spends $285 per month on his website and calls himself the smart blogger. Im aware renting a domain is $10 per year. I was talking about the infra to actually produce content with 20% of the convenience of a medium blog. Take the cost of lost opportunities in account and your first year blogging costs $10k.
Converting everything you do to monetary terms is not a mindset I recommend having. It might make sense for some decisions, but everything does not have to be about money.
If by the end of the day you feel accomplished and happy about what you have achieved then I would count that as a win.
For a lot of people pushing on 3 buttons to create a facebook page is enormously satisfying and spending any more effort is ridiculous. The open web is disappearing because of the opportunity cost.
