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Why Everyone Needs a Personal Website

2025-01-31 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 26:29 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Work and career, Tools, apps and tech, Mindset, motivation and happiness) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Sponsor segment present, AI, His own numbers, Lesson from a book

Talking with Harry, a sceptical corporate accountant, Ali argues that everyone should have a personal website, at three levels: an online CV that helps you stand out for jobs, a private training ground for getting comfortable putting yourself out there, and a luck magnet that brings opportunities; he then names Carrd as the free option and builds a site live.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — What his 2016 website did for him; Harry's objection

  • ★★★ Ali calls starting his personal website in 2016 one of the best decisions he has made: it landed him opportunities as a medical student and as a doctor, played a role in his meeting his wife, and led to his YouTube channel eight years ago. — 00:00:00 · aliabdaal.com, Izzy Sealey
  • ★★★ Ali is convinced that a personal website, costing a few dollars a month and a weekend or two to set up, is one of the best investments you can make in yourself and your career. — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — Level one: the website as an online CV

  • ★★★ Ali's case for a personal website, for a corporate employee or anyone else, has three levels, starting with level one, the online CV. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ A personal website is like a LinkedIn profile on steroids, Ali says: you have complete control over how it looks, what it says and how you present yourself, your own corner of the internet. — 00:01:56 · LinkedIn
  • ★★ Everyone has a decent LinkedIn profile and a polished CV, especially now that AI can write them, Ali says, but relatively few people have a personal website. — 00:02:26 · LinkedIn
  • ★★ Ali has hired over 30 people and seen thousands of applications; in his experience candidates with a personal website or any online presence, even a basic one, are far more likely to get an interview than those invisible online. — 00:03:53
  • ★★ Citing ChatGPT, Ali says the average person in the US applies for over 600 jobs in their lifetime, so even a tiny increase in the chance of being hired could make a huge difference. — 00:03:53 · ChatGPT
  • ★★ Even when you are not job hunting, Ali says, a personal website is like a polished CV in your back pocket, ready for when a recruiter reaches out on LinkedIn or through the website. — 00:04:22 · LinkedIn
  • ★★ A level-one personal website needs only three pages, Ali says: an about page with a short professional and perhaps personal bio, a resume or portfolio, and a contact page. — 00:04:52

00:05:50 — Level two: a training ground for a personal brand; fear; Show Your Work

  • ★★ At level two, Ali says, a personal website becomes baby steps towards building your personal brand. — 00:05:50 · personal brand
  • ★★ Until he started his personal website in 2016, Ali was terrified of putting himself out online, afraid his Facebook friends would think him cringe; he calls that resistance fear. — 00:07:51 · Facebook
  • ★★★ Getting used to putting yourself out there is easier one small step at a time, Ali says: a personal website that no one needs to know exists is a playground to make an about page, add pictures, mess with the layout and write a few blog posts until you are comfortable. — 00:08:50
  • ★★ Ali told no one when he started his personal website or his YouTube channel, posting nothing about it on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram and writing privately for a while; then he shared a blog post with a few trusted friends. — 00:09:19 · Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram
  • ★★ Ali says that without the baby steps of his personal website he would never have taken the chance to start a YouTube channel a year and a half later, because it would have been terrifying. — 00:09:42 · aliabdaal.com
  • ★★ Ali advises writing on your personal website as if people will see it, which gives you a push, and making the website public so that sharing it later involves no friction. — 00:10:26
  • ★★ Ali read Austin Kleon's Show Your Work in late 2015; it made him comfortable with self-expression, and as a medical student building a university admissions company he started writing blog posts sharing what he was learning. — 00:10:56 · Show Your Work!, Austin Kleon, show your work
  • ★★ Ali owes Austin Kleon a massive debt of gratitude for Show Your Work, which he calls an amazing book, super quick and not hard to read, with loads of cartoons. — 00:11:26 · Show Your Work!, Austin Kleon, show your work
  • ★★ A personal website is useful even with no followers and few readers, Ali says, because it gets you comfortable putting yourself out there, which you need to stand out in any career. — 00:11:26

00:11:55 — Level three: a luck magnet; how people find your work; what to write

  • ★★★ At level three, Ali says, a personal website becomes a luck magnet: the more you put out your ideas, insights and experiences, the more you increase your surface area for luck. — 00:11:55

    “that is where your website becomes a luck magnet”

  • ★★ People are unlikely to find a personal website through search engines, Ali says, because search engine optimisation is a whole other game. — 00:12:24

  • ★★ One way people find your website, Ali says, is that you share it yourself on a platform like LinkedIn: write a blog post, say on what you learned moving between accounting firms, and post it to your professional network once you feel comfortable. — 00:12:53 · LinkedIn
  • ★★ The second way people find your website, Ali says, is that others share your work if it is good and useful, because sharing gives them social status points. — 00:13:22
  • ★★ Ali's team often comes across a blog post by an unknown author relevant to a business challenge and shares it in Slack; Ali or Angus reads the author's about page, sees they freelance and hires them. — 00:13:22 · Angus (general manager), Slack
  • ★★ At level three of a personal website, Ali says, focus on how you can be useful to other people and show your work, where levels one and two were mostly about you. — 00:13:52 · show your work, Show Your Work!
  • ★★★ To find what to write, Ali says, aim at the small number of people a few steps behind you rather than at going viral: ask what you wish you had known three or five years ago. — 00:14:36
  • ★★ Ali would skip a generic article of five productivity tips for a specific one, such as five ways to stand out when applying to a Big Four accounting firm, written by someone who landed such a job. — 00:15:13

  • ★★ Content need not be unique, Ali says: there are no unique messages, but there are always unique messengers, and he cites Derek Sivers on how what is obvious and boring to you can be amazing to others. — 00:15:13 · Derek Sivers

    “There are no unique messages, but there are always unique messengers.”

00:15:42 — Everything is hard: build a personal brand now or be disrupted by AI

  • ★★ AI can do people's accounts and many people abroad will do bookkeeping for $5 an hour, Ali says, so a person's value lies in landing clients and building personal relationships. — 00:16:19
  • ★★★ Everything is hard, Ali says, so choose your flavour of hard: build a personal brand now to future-proof your career against AI, or face being laid off by AI years later, with a family and a mortgage and no personal brand. — 00:16:48 · personal brand

00:17:46 — The story "I'm not technical" holds you back

  • ★★ Ali says telling yourself the story that you are not a technical person is just a story, and it is holding you back and will continue to. — 00:17:46
  • ★★ In the AI revolution, Ali says, the people who keep their jobs and thrive will be those who know how to use AI to improve their workflow. — 00:18:16
  • ★★ Ali advises changing the story that you are not a technical person to the fact that you are not a technical person yet, but can learn. — 00:18:16
  • ★★ You can learn to build a website, the basics of coding and the basics of making an AI agent, Ali says, by watching YouTube tutorials. — 00:18:45
  • ★★ Ali says it does not really matter which tool or platform you use to build a website. — 00:18:45

00:19:34 — Which website platform: it hardly matters; Carrd as the free option

  • ★★ For anyone who cannot spend any money on a website, as Ali could not as a teenager, his favourite free option is Carrd. — 00:19:57

00:20:26 — Sponsored: Hostinger, WordPress or its website builder, a live build, one page at a time; sign-off

  • ★ Ali uses Hostinger to host three of his websites: aliabdaal.com, ptya.com for his YouTuber academy and productivitylab.com. — 00:20:26 · aliabdaal.com, Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ A website builder suits anyone who wants a professional-looking site with the least hassle, Ali says, while WordPress is better if you will learn how websites work; he thinks learning WordPress is an incredibly useful skill. — 00:22:13
  • ★★ Ali recommends building a website one page at a time, since AI builders that create many pages at once overwhelm people. — 00:25:16

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked whether to monetise a personal website with ads, the channel says ads will not make any money until the site has loads of traffic. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): To get traffic to a personal website, the channel advises writing on social media and linking back to the website. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: aliabdaal.com · Hostinger · personal brand · Show Your Work! · three levels of a personal website

Also: People: Angus (general manager) · Austin Kleon · Derek Sivers · Izzy Sealey

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy · Productivity Lab

Organizations: Facebook · Instagram · LinkedIn · WP Engine

Concepts: luck surface area · obvious to you, amazing to others · show your work

Products: Carrd · ChatGPT · Framer · Notion · Slack · Squarespace · Webflow · Wix · WordPress

Also centred on Hostinger: You don’t need to be tech-savvy to get your website up and running 💻 #ad

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