Benefits of a Personal Website
Having a personal website or blog can be a friendcatcher and increase your luck surface area. What I mean is that sharing pictures, videos, or text online about things you are passionate about might connect you with like-minded people. Opportunities may arise that wouldn't have otherwise. Some people are solely hired based on the blog posts they wrote or photos they published. (By the way, Kalzumeus aka Patrick McKenzie coined the term friendcatcher and I got the luck idea from Swyx aka Shawn Wang).
Writer, blogger and avid Twitter user Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) describes this idea similarly in his e-book 'Introspect':
"Optimize for the serendipity that you want:
Another way of thinking about all of this is that it’s about optimizing for serendipity that you want. Optimizing for luck. Making yourself receptive, being prepared for opportunities. Something like this happened for me not too long ago. I have a habit of doing Twitter threads about books I’m reading. I’ve also been making videos on my YouTube channel, chatting with friends and so on. One day, I did a book thread about David Deutsch’s Beginning of Infinity. Great book. Turns out I happened to have a mutual friend with David, and he was interested in doing a video chat with me about the book! I’ve had multiple opportunities like this over the years. Sure, it’s possible that I’m just very lucky. But I’ve found that I tend to get a lot luckier when I put myself in places where there are high rates of interaction."
On a personal note, I am exactly doing that. Explaining web concepts and putting it online. Let's see what comes of it!
Further Reading
swyx.io/friendcatchers
swyx.io/create-luck
https://guzey.com/how-to-make-friends-over-the-internet