When I started blogging Way Back When in 2005, things were different.
Blogging was still cool and mostly cozy. People still sought out blogs and fired up their RSS readers and knew the web addresses of their favorite bloggers.
My niche was money and personal finance. I knew a few other bloggers and we commented on each others' blogs and supported each other.
WordPress was easy enough to use that anyone could set up shop and unleash their thoughts on the world. Yet, it wasn't so overcrowded yet that these new webmasters would be that hard to find.
Back in the 2000s, I could blog as a bit of a hobby and I could still do all right. I could get by not treating it as the business it was.
More competition and corporate dollars
It didn't take long for blogging to grow up and move from delightfully homey to corporate commodity to downright cutthroat.
Good or even great content often wasn't enough to guarantee traffic from Google. Webmasters had best get pretty technical and employ a content strategy and search engine optimization and keyword research to continue the lucrative flow of visitors.
In other words, treating it as a hobby just didn't cut it anymore.
Throwing up a post occasionally and not responding fully to commenters took its toll on my traffic and revenue.
Unsticking myself from 2005 hobby thinking
My main blog now has a technical debt of sorts. Well over 1,000 posts but only a handful of traffic to a fraction of them because the posts are:
- Outdated
- Responses to an article that no longer exists except maybe on Archive.org
- More my worldview or a diary entry than anything helpful to my readers
- Bland/uninteresting/yawn
- Short on substance
- Take your pick of anything else
In addition to content showing its age, these factors played a part as well:
- I didn't build an audience due to lack of consistency and I treated them for granted.
- I didn't build an email list until really late in the game, and when I did, I didn't send out emails regularly.
- Most of all, though, I didn't try new things and I didn't take the time to learn different ways of reaching an audience.
Being in this position kind of forces me to become a beginner again.
And that could end up being the best thing for me, and would allow me to help the most people.
A thriving online presence doesn't happen by accident.
It takes dedicated work, consistency, and the desire to try new things and adapt.
It takes daily practice, a stomach for doing it in public, and taking feedback from those who care enough to pay attention, even when it hurts.
Writing on Medium accomplished all of these things for me.
If I want to make money online in the 2020s, I have to let go of the 2000s and join the present.
The water's warm. Time to dive in, rediscover how to swim, and maybe even learn some different strokes.
Thanks for reading!
I love helping people spend less and make more to relieve financial stress and sleep better at night!
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(Photo by Tom Fisk)