People and Blogs: Derek Sivers

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

I’ve been a musician, circus performer, entrepreneur, and TED speaker. I’m a slow thinker, explorer, xenophile, and I love a different point of view. California native, I now live in New Zealand.

What's the story behind your blog?

I sold my company (CD Baby) in 2008, and had previously used its blog to communicate with my audience of 200,000 musicians. So I set up https://sive.rs/ as the new place to share my thoughts.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

This is what I do for everything I post:

1. Write all of my thoughts on a subject.
2. Argue against those ideas.
3. Explore different angles until I’m sick of it.
4. Leave it for a few days or years, then repeat those steps.
5. Hate how messy these thoughts have become.
6. Reduce them to a tiny outline of the key points.
7. Post the outline. Trash the rest.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

Space matters, but when you're really inspired and driven, it's almost like going into a trance. You don't care where you are or how comfortable the chair.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

Static HTML on my own OpenBSD server.

I actually write in HTML. I wrote one sentence per line - see sive.rs/1s - then just fill in </p><p> where I want to make a paragraph break. I find this simpler than depending on some tools to convert my writing into HTML.

Domain at porkbun.com and DNS and CDN with bunny.net (I love them).

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

Whenever I realize I'd like something to be different, I change it.

Long ago, my blog was on WordPress. But I kept removing more and more from the default template until I realized WordPress was really unnecessary and a bloated obstacle.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

$5/month for my OpenBSD server at vultr.com

The blog itself earns nothing, and I don't want it to.

But I sell my books on sivers.com and that makes a ton of money for charity.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

Definitely jvns.ca

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

See legacytrust.nz and hundredyearhost.com

I want to help people's personal websites stay alive for a hundred years - to be their lasting digital legacy after their death.