I think this approach is effective because if I struggled with something, there’s a pretty good chance that other people are struggling with it too, and what I learned is likely to be useful to at least some of them!
This type of blogging has been a door opener for me. I’ve written countless posts about things I’ve struggled with – whether or not I solved them – and they’ve almost always resulted in opportunities or have helped others. I’ve been offered full-time jobs as a result of a single blog post. As I mentioned a few days ago, my experience helping people transfer Stripe transcriptions from one account to another (mostly as the result of an acquisition) has helped many companies save a lot of time and headaches. No one would know I could do that if I didn’t blog about it.
Everyone should have a blog!