Is blogging dead in 2019? That’s a common question circling around the internet, not just this year, but the previous years as well.
Many people who are interested in starting a blog are having doubts as to whether they should even start one. The pro bloggers of course, would say that blogging will never cease to exist, but may change forms.
What are your thoughts on it?
Disclaimer: There may be affiliate links in the article.
My blogging journey
When I started my first blog more than a decade ago, even before Bitcoin existed, blogs were different. They were very different from what you see these days.
My first blog was on the Blogger platform and it was free. Those free blogs came with a “.blogspot” extension and it was normal those days.
Almost all of my friends had a blog on Blogspot and we followed each other on our feeds.
Those blogs were ugly in retrospect. I still have my old blog but it was never updated anymore. As expected, it didn’t get much traffic at all.
In my university days, I did something similar. I started a free blog again on Blogspot (on legal issues) and it didn’t really take off so I left it dormant.
Fast forward to last year, I started a blog yet again, but this time it’s on WordPress and I used my own hosting (Bluehost). I started doing full-time blogging with the aim to make this blog my business and earn money from it.
And so I did. I made quite a bit since I started, and I even hit over 100,000 page views on my good months. It didn’t last very long and my traffic has slumped, but it’s more consistent these days.
I recently (a week ago) increased my posting frequency since this blog has multiple niches. I used to post 3 times a week, but now I’m posting once a day. It may take some time before traffic starts coming in from the new articles.
The reason why I’m posting more often (contrary to what pro bloggers tell you), is that I find it easier to rank my articles on Google these days. Perhaps the blog has increased in authority and backlinks, making it easier to rank.
It’s still an experiment, but I hope to push it back to 100,000 monthly page views and at least maintain it this time. I noticed some blogs with a million page views or so, post at least once a day. I can’t compete with Forbes or HuffPost (hundreds /thousands of articles a day) but I’ll still try.
The second reason why I post a lot is because my monetization strategy has changed. I’m now using a lot of ads (with Mediavine) and I find them super awesome in comparison with Adsense.
You can actually make full-time income with Mediavine if you have enough traffic. Some people may prefer affiliate marketing, but I noticed I suck at it. Not everyone can be a good affiliate marketer.
I looked at affiliate marketing as my main source of income back then but I realized it’s hard as a multi-niche blog. Hence, ads will be my main source of income for now, followed by some affiliate earnings.
My thoughts on whether blogging is dead
As mentioned in my blogging journey, I used to blog on a different platform and the website looked really ugly in comparison with blogs these days.
Even though most of my friends used to blog those days, they completely stopped blogging after social networks came into play. We started accounts at Friendster, Hi-5, Myspace and eventually Facebook which is the most popular now.
After Facebook, even more social media platforms came into existence, and most people stopped blogging entirely. Or you could say that they only do short-form blogging on Facebook and Instagram these days.
Back to the issue, I don’t think blogging is dead or will die anytime soon. You can say that blogging has changed form. There are still a lot of people who blog on Blogspot but the numbers have decreased a lot over the years.
Blogging may have also changed form to social media. Many prefer to just write short content on social media with beautiful photos. It’s easier that way, but your account is never safe though. It can be removed at anytime for whatever reason. That is why I still prefer to have my own website.
Blogging has also moved towards being a business these days. Many people started blogging these days to make an income and in some instances make a full-time living from it.
Back then, it would be weird to say that you blog for a living. These days, it’s becoming more of a common or millennial thing.
Hence, I don’t think blogging is dead or will die, but the form of blogging may change from time to time.
It may turn into vlogging or podcasts. Who knows?
As for me, I’ll stick to written content.
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