I've been writing reviews since my Reddit days, and I posted a couple here on Lemmy (primarily Mecha anime). However, since I can't post for reddit for reasons I don't want to into detail for and since Lemmy is too small, I'm thinking about just making my own website to post reviews on. So should I go for it? What should I know before doing it?

Here's a recent review to get an idea of my writing style

Consider an email list. Ghost is a publishing option that would let you have both a website and an email. It’s easier to get your audience’s attention if you send them messages rather than relying on them to visit your website.

Broadly I think it’s a good idea. And post your writing on Lemmy as well!

If you're asking about doing it as something to generate a living on, I'd be kind of skeptical. I can't think of a whole lot of review sites out there today like that with full-timers.

If not, though, I don't see what you have to lose other than the time and maybe a bit of money.

Why do you want to do this?

Yes.

Just use an existing platform of some kind, spend your time reviewing rather than building a site to post them on.

I'd say use something like neocities.org. It's free and easy to use and you can still completely control what it will look like.

If you're good you'll be fodder for some AI crawling your site

But do it, follow your joy

Absolutely! Publish your reviews on your own site, and then syndicate them everywhere (POSSE). If you wanna try a bunch of different platforms and see what gets you engagement, you can post the link multiple times.

Ur website is gonna get less traffic than Lemmy.

But yeah! Go for it! So easy to make a website these days. Cheap to get a domain.

Just do it if you have fun with it.

I am trying to get away from IMDB. There's TMDB, which works fine, but lacks decent reviews. You could consider writing reviews there.

Absolutely, get your own domain and do your thing, then share it here.

Yes! You can create posts on Lemmy with the summary and a link to your site. The web is made of many platforms with links between then. Why not put your long-lived content on a platform you own? The web is a safe bet.

Your own website will likely be consider smaller than lemmy.

Why not post them to anilist or mal?

More info about POSSE: https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

It would be a serious challenge to get traffic.

Advice I was given that I think applies here: get your adience first (Discord buddies or whatever, your preexisting connections maybe, or start finding a large set of web buddies on whatever platform), then curate your content to them.

Even with that though, I have a hard time imagining paying or suffering ads just to read someone's reviews.

But hey, if you're entertaining enough and market well enough, anything is possible ~ At the worst maybe it will be a good first failire as you build skills and respurces for a future success.

Do people actually like email so much they voluntarily get more of it?

I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. This is the critical question the OP didn’t answer.

It probably came off as more combative than I intended, especially if people are reading the question as "do you think I'm good enough to have my own site?" instead of "do you think this is a good side hustle/hobby for me?".

alls I can say is if you post a link to a website and don't copy the text into the federation post then I won't read it.

They’re more likely to read it in their inbox than remember to visit your website

You can test drive it on something small and fun like neocities before getting an entire domain.