I haven’t given any attention to my blog for the last two months or so. Partly because I just got my first full-time job (yay!) and partly because I procrastinated on my next post.

Don’t worry, I plan to continue posting on a weekly basis. I just might be creating slightly different content than what you might be used to if you’ve been following along with me up until this point.

Recently, I looked into monetizing my content by setting up ads with Google. Twice I got denied by them because my content “wasn’t unique enough” and didn’t “add value” to the Internet as a whole. I mean damn Google really just told me my blog was worthless. Ouch.

But then I started thinking about it. Was my blog truly adding value as I hoped it was?

Value for you

First, I have to consider the most important question, does my blog add value to my readers (you)?

Most of my content consists of regurgitating what I learn by reading tutorials online, taking courses, and watching videos. I find what I learn extremely interesting, so I share it in hopes that someone might find my blog and get the same learning benefits as I have.

But, does this recirculation really bring anything to the table? If you look up one of my most recent posts on building an evil twin, you’ll find tons of tutorials detailing what I’ve written. I may have refined what others have done and added my own insights, but most of that information is already out there.

I mean at this point with AI, training a text-generating model on a bunch of evil twin tutorials and telling it to spit out a post on how to set one up would probably yield a better article than what I could have written.

Where I can add the most value to the lives of others is by providing my own thoughts and opinions on the subjects I learn. Anyone can Google the best cybersecurity tutorials on the internet but they can’t search for my unique expertise.

Value for me

While working on my latest post about creating an Evil Twin with a captive portal, I found what I was doing to be tedious and slightly stressful. I spent hours trying to set up a working script for the twin as well as a local web server to host my captive portal.

I do enough debugging and dealing with technical headaches at my job anyway. So, it began to feel like I was bringing work into my blogging time, making it not as fun.

While I did learn a lot struggling through this mini-project other people have already detailed how to do all of this. What is the point of me trying so hard just to add another tutorial?

Alternatively, I had fun writing my more opinionated post on AI. It didn’t feel like work. It was also much easier and less time-consuming than trying to emulate what someone else already did. I don’t want to waste any more time reinventing the wheel.

This doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing technical posts or tutorials altogether. I still love learning and taking notes on the various things I learn related to cybersecurity (among other subjects). But, instead of publishing a more cohesive collection of my notes, I’m going to draw my own thoughts and insights on them to make them more powerful.

Notetaking is a great way to retain information (if you write notes in your own words that is). Teaching someone else what you have learned is an even better way to learn. This was the main reason I started my blog in the first place.

But, the most powerful learning experience of all is to build off what you’ve learned to formulate new ideas.

That shows true mastery and is what I will achieve in future posts.

What to expect in the future

Going forward, you can expect to see more opinionated posts and less tutorials. That doesn’t mean I’ll cut out tutorials altogether. If I discover a bug or find a unique solution to a CTF, I’ll definitely detail that here. So, if you enjoyed the technical content, don’t worry! That’s not going anywhere.

I also have developed other interests I’d love to share here. Recently, I’ve gotten into investing so I can get a jump start on building my portfolio. So, in the near future, expect to see some posts in the area of finance.

If you’re reading this, thank you for sticking with me! I’m truly sorry I’ve been away for a while, but I believe this change will better you than ever before!