Black Belt Spodermen
Elite Member
- Jan 18, 2016
- 2,803
- 1,684
It was February 2015 when I created my first website based on the niche of my interest. I built and re-created the site several times to the point where it started looking professional.
In 5 years, I earned about $150K which was quite good for me. It was September 2017, when my site got hit for the first time by the Google algorithm.
I didn't quit even though the traffic declined more than 50% as the revenue generated was still fine and I was single at that time.
I managed to recover 25% more traffic with new articles. Ups and downs came and my site went through several google algos but never went to zero completely.
I got married in 2019 and in 2022, we are expecting our first child. However, the new May Update couldn't have come at a better time.
As I saw most websites going down the drain, my website suffered only a 10% traffic decline. However, I was able to recover 5% of that in a month by regularly updating content and re-organizing my articles.
I didn't do any major site changes, no manual backlinks, no visual changes, etc. My site has a good number of not quality but super high-quality backlinks including Edu and those in my niche which are considered major authority sites. All of them link to me naturally.
However, since the start of January 2022, my affiliate revenue dropped to around 30% suddenly even though the traffic was the same. Yes, it was 1/3 of the traffic I used to get in prime days but I was making fine as 70% of my income was coming from ads and that was fine.
I was depressed for a long time but I kept grinding.
But here comes the biggest shock of my life!
Only yesterday I found out that Google has removed more than 50% of my posts from the SERPs and more and more posts are joining this list. There is no penalty from Google, no message in webmaster, no signs of any problems, and all of those pages are indexed just fine but they have lost all their rankings from the first page to non-existent page.
The traffic is continuously declining and I don't think it will come back any soon as half of my competitors saw the same fate, however, they were hit by the May update but I did not, thinking I was safe.
No, my site is not safe from Google, and neither is yours. Take this as a warning but if a site like mine that has more than 700 quality articles having good backlinks can die, sites that are similar or inferior to mine can also die.
Unfortunately, this is the end of my 7 years of blogging career and I can't take this anymore. I never pursued any job since I started blogging at the end of my final year of graduation. I was pretty successful but after suffering so many different hits, I am thinking of finding a job.
I am preferring the freelance writing job in my niche but if I don't get one, then I have to take a bag and grind for a job outside of my home.
I learned a lot in this journey and from this forum. I might come back sometime in the future but currently, it looks like Google just wants the e-commerce sites to survive while killing small businesses like mine.
In 5 years, I earned about $150K which was quite good for me. It was September 2017, when my site got hit for the first time by the Google algorithm.
I didn't quit even though the traffic declined more than 50% as the revenue generated was still fine and I was single at that time.
I managed to recover 25% more traffic with new articles. Ups and downs came and my site went through several google algos but never went to zero completely.
I got married in 2019 and in 2022, we are expecting our first child. However, the new May Update couldn't have come at a better time.
As I saw most websites going down the drain, my website suffered only a 10% traffic decline. However, I was able to recover 5% of that in a month by regularly updating content and re-organizing my articles.
I didn't do any major site changes, no manual backlinks, no visual changes, etc. My site has a good number of not quality but super high-quality backlinks including Edu and those in my niche which are considered major authority sites. All of them link to me naturally.
However, since the start of January 2022, my affiliate revenue dropped to around 30% suddenly even though the traffic was the same. Yes, it was 1/3 of the traffic I used to get in prime days but I was making fine as 70% of my income was coming from ads and that was fine.
I was depressed for a long time but I kept grinding.
But here comes the biggest shock of my life!
Only yesterday I found out that Google has removed more than 50% of my posts from the SERPs and more and more posts are joining this list. There is no penalty from Google, no message in webmaster, no signs of any problems, and all of those pages are indexed just fine but they have lost all their rankings from the first page to non-existent page.
The traffic is continuously declining and I don't think it will come back any soon as half of my competitors saw the same fate, however, they were hit by the May update but I did not, thinking I was safe.
No, my site is not safe from Google, and neither is yours. Take this as a warning but if a site like mine that has more than 700 quality articles having good backlinks can die, sites that are similar or inferior to mine can also die.
Unfortunately, this is the end of my 7 years of blogging career and I can't take this anymore. I never pursued any job since I started blogging at the end of my final year of graduation. I was pretty successful but after suffering so many different hits, I am thinking of finding a job.
I am preferring the freelance writing job in my niche but if I don't get one, then I have to take a bag and grind for a job outside of my home.
I learned a lot in this journey and from this forum. I might come back sometime in the future but currently, it looks like Google just wants the e-commerce sites to survive while killing small businesses like mine.
