Low morale.

James K · Mar 10, 2022

To be honest, it has not been easy. As someone pointed out, most of the keywords that would make you money are already taken care of by the big media companies. Plus, Google has made it quite difficult to rank a new site...sites are now even taking more than a year in sand-box mode.

I would suggest you find something to be doing on the side along with whatever you're doing currently. That way, you only get to blog part-time.

It's frustrating to blog full time without a profit or any kind of growth.

sickminds · Mar 10, 2022

Onsi said:
Hey guys how do you deal with low morale in the blogging industry? I just feel like throwing everything down and stop blogging. I feel like I am spending a ton shit of money without any ROI in the near future and as a result, my morale is very low. I still have a passion for blogging and I did not start it for money alone. How does someone goes about this? Would appreciate all answers and critiques.

This is the point where you work harder!

Black Belt Spodermen · Mar 10, 2022

splishsplash said:
Blogging is one of the hardest ways to make money in 2022.

It's not "dead", but if you're going to call something dead in 2022, you could say it's blogging.

Blogging was big in the early 2010's..

Then came YouTube, which is still huge, but we've gone even MORE extreme now with tiktok.

People have no attention span.

YouTube videos are easier to digest, but guess what.. Even that's too much for the masses now.

They want BITE sized videos. Even YouTube is pushing YouTube Shorts because of this trend.

So you're really in a shrinking market.

People learn and consume with videos.

SEO is significantly more competitive than it used to be.

Amazon associates is complete garbage now.

And to top it off the blogging world is DOMINATED by big media these days.

This was NOT the case in 2015, and definitely not in 2010 when you could step into ANY niche with very little competition.

Look at this

https://web.archive.org/web/20120504065642/http://thewirecutter.com/
thewirecutter.com in May 2012.

"the best ipad case"

"cheap wireless speakers"

"best juicer"

lol.. so easy back then.

Let's use semrush's historical rankings to see what it ranked for back in may 2012

Lovely. They only started in Nov/Dec 2011..

Look at this - https://web.archive.org/web/20111214150408/http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/vizio-e260mv/

Massive LOL.

Imagine trying to rank with that today.

3 paragraphs and a text list of 5 TV's.

I'm not sure what the commissions then were. I believe they were 15% at one point. When I started with Amazon they were volume based up to 8.5%. My first amazon site was a 5 page EMD. I wrote the main page and had a cheap writer create 5 support articles. Created some web 2's and expired tumblrs and I was making $1k/mo within about 3 months. Now, to make $1k/mo with amazon.. lol. What a joke. A million words of content. Maybe half a million with some strong SEO. Incredibly unprofitable unless you're willing to sit and write all day long yourself.

Interesting traffic drop in July 2012. Maybe a Panda update hit them, but they recovered in Dec 2012. Lots of Panda updates in 2012. Gosh, I remember Panda when knowing about Panda made you cutting-edge I remember calling up an agency in 2012 to get a job and they were impressed when I talked about Panda. The days before Panda were even more ridiculously easy

Anyway.. For anyone having a go at building a real site, this was the time, and look how he exploded. 71k traffic by Dec 2013.

Let's look at a couple of keywords he ranked for here in May 2012.

6 for best juicer

With this page

https://web.archive.org/web/20120504124455/http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-juicer/
#1 for best fm transmitter..

So yeah..

You are too late.

Blogging is fine if you're really passionate about it and have a niche market, but for a general way to make money it's utter garbage and has been for some time.

There are way way better ways to make money.

Videos and video ads. But doing a consulting based business is the easiest way to make $5k/mo pretty quickly. Being a content creator is a 0.1% make it, the rest don't type of business.

Man, you are so damn right with all of this. I started in 2015 and now it's so hard that I feel like what should I do with my blog. I started Youtube recently and it is gaining some organic growth but it hurts when I see that the blog which used to rank in top 5 for very competitive words in 2015-2016 is now pushed to 3rd page for those keywords.

lotsofmoney · Mar 12, 2022

It can happen as newbie when you have not seen the results. When money starts coming in, you will realize the potential.

Deleted member 1333509 · Mar 12, 2022

Onsi said:
Hey guys how do you deal with low morale in the blogging industry? I just feel like throwing everything down and stop blogging. I feel like I am spending a ton shit of money without any ROI in the near future and as a result, my morale is very low. I still have a passion for blogging and I did not start it for money alone. How does someone goes about this? Would appreciate all answers and critiques.

The worst situation you can generally be in is swimming in the same direction as 100,000 other people doing exactly the same thing, and trying to be the one that wins.

The bloggers or early SEO pros or etc etc who bank(ed) and are/were wildly successful are the ones that do/did things in a different way. I think Peter Thiel is the guy who famously said that competition should be avoided at all costs, or something that I'm paraphrasing there.

Instead of blogging in a way where it feels like a content factory amongst a saturated market of other content factories all trying to grind up the rankings one step at a time, treat what you're doing as an experiment and spend some time thinking about totally novel things you can try out which likely aren't being done by any/many other people.

Mix up the way you write your content or have it written. Research growth hacking and viral marketing techniques that have nothing to do with blogging and then try to apply your own versions of them to the content you produce. Deliberately do something that you would class as borderline crazy in relation to your blogging business, but crazy in a way where it actually might have a chance of really blowing up a piece.

If you're already throwing a tonne of cash at it now, and obviously aren't feeling very inspired to continue, what do you really have to lose? At least it'll be something that will mental stimulate you, and if you find something which works that other people aren't doing, your path to success will be much shorter and more direct (as long as you're good at keeping secrets).

Best of luck.

OccultKingdoms · Mar 13, 2022

Blogging to start a business is akin to buying a brand new car just to get from point a to point b.

Your initial investment (let's assume time is money) will be equal to about $70k just to get your feet wet.

That's about 1000 pages which is a minimum to start a blog aka content farm in 2022. This will be without any links which puts you behind.

A good rule is that you don't invest in blogging in 2022 unless you can outsource all the work to someone, meaning you need to have $70k ready in cash to invest.
It should be a part of your promotional strategy, but never the point of your business.

Otherwise, it will feel like a hobby you are investing a ton into, but in fact, all you hope for is money. You will quit before you start.

If you want to gain recognition, blogging on someone else websites (for your money) sounds like a better idea.
Or read about growth hacks, hit local, non-English markets, and get the idea of writing commercially for your undeveloped website out of your way.

The idea of running a commercial blog is to spot an opportunity and not simply write for the sake of writing.

Low morale.

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