The blogging trap I fell into (and how to avoid it)
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Hello and greetings from Madeira Island in the height of summer. π Here's a glorious snap from my latest weekend hike. Today, I want to share with you one of the most important lessons I've ever learned on my blogging journey. It all started on the exciting day when one of my blogs got accepted into Mediavine. For those of you who don't know it, Mediavine is one of the premium display ad providers in the blogosphere. Think Google ads, but better. They have pretty rigorous standards. Your site needs proof of having over 50K sessions per month, with a majority of US traffic. At that time, my blog was soaring, pulling in over 100K monthly visits. Being accepted into the hallowed Mediavine program made me feel like I'd really 'arrived' as a blogger. At first, everything went well. The Mediavine team were super helpful and easy to interact with. And, more importantly, my blog was now earning several thousands of dollars per month in real passive income. Living the dream, right? In fact, I became so comfortable earning this passive income that I made a fatal mistake. I gave up on building additional income streams from that blog. Then, suddenly, the September 2023 update happened and Google smashed my site. Revenue dropped. And kept dropping. Until the blog that had once earned several thousand was now lucky to earn a couple of hundred. Fortunately, I still had my SaaS clients, so it wasn't a total wipeout. But my dreams of building a truly passive income from blogging had been smashed to pieces. The experience taught me some valuable lessons. #1. Putting all your revenue 'eggs' into one Google 'basket' is a huge mistakeAs recent updates have made very clear, we can't rely on Google for anything. And why should we, really? Google doesn't owe us anything. It's a for-profit company that will do whatever works best for its bottom line. If that means smashing small publishers into smithereens, so be it. So having your entire revenue being dependent on Google is a seriously unwise business model these days. #2. Blogging for ad revenue encourages poor quality contentChasing ad revenue encourages bloggers to go after keywords based on their volume only. In turn, that encourages bloggers to churn out fast, trashy AI content βΒ simply to pull in traffic and make money from ads. You've probably seen it β blogs about celebrity net worth, who's dating who, "sneaky tricks" to bust belly fat, and so on. Just empty, badly-written trash, designed as a mere vehicle for ads. That approach pollutes the information space for all of us. Google's desire to move away from that is totally understandable. #3. Methods where your blog is the 'middleman' are no longer worth itThink about it this way. When you're running third-party ads on your blog, what value are you really providing? Not a lot. You're simply acting as the middleman for other companies, all of which are making more money than you. The same could be said for affiliate marketing. Your "unbiased roundup review" is never truly unbiased, let's face it. There's always a specific outcome that you'd prefer the reader to take β buying the product with the highest affiliate commission. We as bloggers know it, and, increasingly, readers know it too. #4. Genuine value-added blogging is the best way forwardThe lessons I've learned from this experience have reshaped my approach to blogging. Moving away from ad-dependent models towards creating genuine value is not just more fulfilling, but also more sustainable in the long run. Here are some ideas:
The third one is outside my scope at the moment. But the first and the second are very much on the radar. Going forward, I'm focusing on: 1) developing my own digital products, and 2) offering services to help expertise-led businesses like coaches grow with SEO, including a membership community. I'm excited to share this journey with you and provide updates on my progress in future newsletters. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Have you had similar experiences with blogging? What strategies are you using to create sustainable income streams from blogging? Hit 'reply' and let me know! Until next time, Samantha Latest on the blog
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Traffic Mastery Insider β by Samantha North
samanthanorth.com
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