Is blogging very hard now?

[ShailendraZade]

How many of you have left blogging and doing something else?

 

[jamana832]

if traffic is from Social media .. i dont think so

 

[ShailendraZade]

if traffic is from Social media .. i dont think s

What about organic traffic?

 

[Deleted member 1603965]

It is.

Just today morning my time I was discussing whether Google's AI overview was impacting one of my client's site or not on BHW.

Its getting quite tough and unbearable with time.

Hopefully, things will get better.

 

[ShailendraZade]

It is.

Just today morning my time I was discussing whether Google's AI overview was impacting one of my client's site or not on BHW.

Its getting quite tough and unbearable with time.

Hopefully, things will get better.

SGE significantly impacted my traffic, resulting in a 30% drop in visits, even though my page still holds the #1 position.

 

[Mukeshwar Singh]

What do you guys think about Affiliate Marketing?

 

[imnew]

Blogging is easier than ever but the problem is nobody reading blogs nowadays

 

[Enchant]

What do you guys think about Affiliate Marketing?

It's the best way to monetize content these days.

Wouldn't say it's very hard, it's more like it's unpredictable with these Google core updates which is why people need to start building up their social media content alongside the blog to drive traffic.

 

[velinxs]

Idk but e-commerce I just made is ranking really well. I almost think e-commerce blogs are way to go now lol

 

[tazarbm]

Blogging is easier than ever but the problem is nobody reading blogs nowadays

easier than ever for who?? Tech-illiterate people like me, and people who are not geeks, nerds, or don't like technology so much have a hard time putting up with google technical requirements (canonicals, redirects, htaccess and robots files, programmatic SEO, knowledge graphs, AI handling, etc)...

Most of these things didn't happen (or didn't happen as much) back in 2008 when I started with SEO. Back then I knew that if I had content and the content was decent I would rank. Nowadays you only rank if you have money to pour into quality links and programmatic SEO (ie. scaling up mass semi-autoblog spamming), or if you're a nerd and can understand, and play by google technical rules... and even this is not enough as we see - more often than not - legit and small (niche) sites getting screwed more than anything else...

I respectfully disagree with your opinion. I know that I'm an easy quitter and never stressed about anything, but I also have the experience of past when I would slap 20 PLR articles (not even edited) on a template, upload all 20+ HTML files to my hosting and call it a site and would rank within 1 month with just a few articles spun and submitted to EzineArticles, GO Articles, Self Growth, ArticlesBase and a few other big article directories.

And for some of my sites I would get more traffic (which was as good as google traffic) from these article directories than from google itself. But anyway, that's a story for another day...

The point that I want to make is that blogging is not easier than ever, for the average Joe blogging is harder and needs more interaction and investment than in the past...

Also, if you'll spend a lot of time on the forum you will notice many people saying how traditional blogs / content sites don't cut it anymore. For whatever reason google seems to prefer to rank only businesses and stores nowadays, so that's what makes blogging even more useless for the average Joe / mom and pop sites...

Idk but e-commerce I just made is ranking really well. I almost think e-commerce blogs are way to go now lol

case in point lol (sorry for quoting you, mate, but you just proved one of my points )

 

[imnew]

easier than ever for who??

Oh man! I'm sorry, I think my sarcasm was not very clear. Blogging is the worst investment of time and energy in its current state.

Yes, I know because I myself wasted 3-4 years trying to create various blogs/niche sites and still stuffer from that trauma.

For solo hustlers like us, organic traffic is a myth. It's totally impossible to rank for anything valuable at this time. And even if it ranks, almost nobody clicks. Thousands of impressions but only a few clicks in search console. True story.

 

[tazarbm]

Oh man! I'm sorry, I think my sarcasm was not very clear. Blogging is the worst investment of time and energy in its current state.

you were hard to read, so I didn't get the sarcasm. But then again, oftentimes I'm dense as a brick, so you don't have to apologize that I missed the sarcasm, I oftentimes do

Yes, I know because I myself wasted 3-4 years trying to create various blogs/niche sites and still stuffer from that trauma.

I feel you. As a single dude doing it all (site creating and design, site structuring and SEO, content creation, marketing, link building, etc) I can totally related to your struggle...

For solo hustlers like us, organic traffic is a myth

yep!

And even if it ranks, almost nobody clicks. Thousands of impressions but only a few clicks in search console. True story.

fully agree! And with the risk of being called conspiracy theorist (or being asked for proof that I don't have) I will still say that google purposely deliver traffic to the sites they want, not necessarily the sites that have the best content or the best user experience. I've noticed this 3-4 years ago when I saw sites with high authority and big budgets for SEO getting insane traffic (I'm talking about 16k visitors a month) for keywords with 30 monthly searches that the site ranked at #1 only got 40-50 clicks a month. I saw this in Ahrefs some years ago when I could afford Ahrefs subscription, and it wasn't just a random keyword, occasionally, or in a certain niche. The volumes differed, but there were several keywords that I've checked back then in 3 niches (pregnacy, car repair, leopard gecko), and all of these niches had authority sites in their respective niche ranking anywhere from #2 to #8 or even #10 but getting heaps of traffic for low volume keywords, while the sites ranking #1 barely got any clicks even though they were more optimized than the big authority sites that only ranked with product pages devoid of any content or links, or on-page SEO...

Again, this didn't happen for ALL / most keywords, I'm not trying to deceive people into believing this. But there were certain keywords in many niches that had this pattern, and if that's not total and blatant google regulating the traffic I don't know what it is. If you're a little guy you spend your money and time creating content to feed the googlebot so that google can take over the world by monopolizing the traffic, legally or otherwise. So yeah.... blogging nowadays is dead for the little guy. Like I said, only the rich, the geeks and the agencies / black hat networks can make money with blogging nowadays, if you don't have at least $200-300 per month to invest in SEO I don't think you'll see any ROI with blogging alone (unless you have a store attached to it, I've noticed a lot of ecom sites ranking over the years, even for keywords that should theoretically be reserved to content sites / blogs)... but then again, if you rank with a store then that's not blogging, so...

 

[Typo Titan]

How many of you have left blogging and doing something else?

As a content writer, I've observed that many bloggers have transitioned to other pursuits, often due to evolving interests, changing industry trends, or the desire for more stable income sources.

 

[Enchant]

easier than ever for who?? Tech-illiterate people like me, and people who are not geeks, nerds, or don't like technology so much have a hard time putting up with google technical requirements (canonicals, redirects, htaccess and robots files, programmatic SEO, knowledge graphs, AI handling, etc)...

Most of these things didn't happen (or didn't happen as much) back in 2008 when I started with SEO. Back then I knew that if I had content and the content was decent I would rank. Nowadays you only rank if you have money to pour into quality links and programmatic SEO (ie. scaling up mass semi-autoblog spamming), or if you're a nerd and can understand, and play by google technical rules... and even this is not enough as we see - more often than not - legit and small (niche) sites getting screwed more than anything else...

I respectfully disagree with your opinion. I know that I'm an easy quitter and never stressed about anything, but I also have the experience of past when I would slap 20 PLR articles (not even edited) on a template, upload all 20+ HTML files to my hosting and call it a site and would rank within 1 month with just a few articles spun and submitted to EzineArticles, GO Articles, Self Growth, ArticlesBase and a few other big article directories.

And for some of my sites I would get more traffic (which was as good as google traffic) from these article directories than from google itself. But anyway, that's a story for another day...

The point that I want to make is that blogging is not easier than ever, for the average Joe blogging is harder and needs more interaction and investment than in the past...

Also, if you'll spend a lot of time on the forum you will notice many people saying how traditional blogs / content sites don't cut it anymore. For whatever reason google seems to prefer to rank only businesses and stores nowadays, so that's what makes blogging even more useless for the average Joe / mom and pop sites...


case in point lol (sorry for quoting you, mate, but you just proved one of my points )

Cheers to these good old days, these days I think Google doesn't even like blogs. Because I created a store in a sub domain and it comes with a blog section. And my sub domain which is mainly a store with a small blog is out performing the main domain which is just a blog. I've came to the conclusion that Google wants to push stores and business and not just blogs.

 

[tazarbm]

And my sub domain which is mainly a store with a small blog is out performing the main domain which is just a blog. I've came to the conclusion that Google wants to push stores and business and not just blogs.

that's my impression too...

 

[PeterNorthpole]

As a content writer, I've observed that many bloggers have transitioned to other pursuits, often due to evolving interests, changing industry trends, or the desire for more stable income sources.

Has this something to do with AI?

 

[OptimalOrbit]

No not too much

 

[MoonStarz]

not easy there is some difficulty, AI help a lot to generate content but still based on the niche you select method to work.

 

[velinxs]

I think when people search questions they used to get blogs now they get generative AI and Forbes, e-commerce still doing well bc it's commercial terms cant solve with AI.

"Best" listicles websites I've seen some still rank well obviously programmatic

 

[DestinyCalls]

It used to be easier years ago, but still possible. Not worth the headache tho imo