Down to brass tacks. The pointing end.
You have to want to attack the topic.
Not want. Need.
You have to must become a world expert in the topic.
You must:
- ...read all the books
- ...watch all the videos
- ...study all the APIs
- ...dig into the source code
- etc.
Want is not enough. We can want all day, but we need to do the things.
You must be intrinsically motivated.
You must have a deep need to know how it all works and an equal need to tell everyone all about it.
Becoming a world expert in the topic is the outcome of the project. It is the outcome you can control and the outcome to aim for.
The blog is just documenting the journey. It just so happens that it is also excellent marketing.
The books and courses capture what was learned along the way in a discrete packages. It just so happens these are excellent information products,
You have limited control over whether the marketing works. You have limited control over whether the products fit the market.
Not "no control", you do have some control and you can do it better or worse and improve over time. But your control is limited.
Therefore, it is most useful to focus on the outcomes you can control.
Becoming a world expert on the specific topic you have focused.
This is partly why it must be limited in scope. It is hard to stay laser focused for more than one year.
It gets boring. The topic get exhausted. You see shiny objects elsewhere.
One year is long enough to hit the top 1% will full time effort.
After one year, you can then move on, if you so choose, or double down and expand scope to sibling topics.
I don't think anything interesting can be built in less than 3 years, so maybe that should be the scope of the topic.
Becoming a world expert in the topic must be your personal "why" behind the project.
Everything you bump into something you don't totally grok, you must burn with desire to know about, then document what you learn. Burn. As in excited to get up earlier tomorrow to find out. Seriously.
In fact, document this why. This too is good marketing. It captures what developers interested in the topic also feel, deep down. Those that are coming to it out of interest, rather than problem solving at work.
Why do developers need to learn your topic?