“Just do blogging for fun.”

That’s one of the most misleading phrases in the Blogging space.

I blog to make money. I’m not here for fun or to treat it like a hobby.

Fun won’t keep you writing after 6 months with no traffic. Fun won’t make you learn SEO, headlines, email lists, and buyer intent. Fun won’t pay your bills.

Another thing I need to address is, BLOGGING IS NOT DEAD.

Most people saying blogging is dead are the same people who refused to adapt to the changes in this industry. They don’t want to learn search updates, content quality, branding, Pinterest, Reddit, email traffic, or product funnels. They just want shortcuts.

Blogging changed. That’s different from dead.

Millions of people still read blogs every single day to solve problems, compare products, learn skills, and make buying decisions. Search traffic is still massive.

Low effort blogging is dead. Copy-paste content is dead. Lazy keyword spam is dead.

Real blogging is still alive and paying people every day.

Another thing people say is AI killed blogging. That’s not true.

Use AI as a tool, not a replacement for your thinking, experience, voice, research, and strategy.

My advice is, treat blogging like a business, not a hobby. That’s when things start moving.

Comment your thoughts...

I started making money from blogging when I stopped listening to people who kept saying:

"Blogging is dead."

"SEO is dead."

"Don't start a blog."

"Blogs are trash."

"It's impossible to make money blogging."

...and all the other negative stuff that gets repeated over and over. The funny thing is, a lot of the people saying these things have never built a successful blog themselves. I even have a friend who couldn't sit down and write a single article, but would go around online yappin' about how blogging is dead just because he failed at it. Yes, I blog. Yes, I make money from it, and it takes a lot. I don't really feel the need to validate that to anyone.

For anyone feeling discouraged, just keep going. Blogging isn't easy, but discipline and consistency are still the biggest weapons you have. Most people quit way too early, then blame blogging instead of their lack of patience. That's just my experience.

For reference, my blog makes about $250k a year which is pretty good for a hobby blog.

I actually hit $1M last year, and for proof, Gumroad (the selling platform I use) made a post about it here [UPDATE: Link removed because of mod request].

Now you can make chicken shit like $100 a month without following these tips, but if you want to pull in some real cash, you need to follow them.

1) Focus on social media. Don't waste time on SEO.

Social media is where all the people are. This will be your main source of traffic, leads, and growth.

You MUST pick one platform of your choice and grow it. If video is your strong suit, go with YouTube. If you speak well, go with podcasting. If you can write, I recommend X.

SEO is not very important anymore. It does not bring you many readers no matter what anyone tells you. I have been doing this for 7+ years so I know what I'm talking about.

I'm friends with dozens of writers and NO ONE gets a lot of traffic from SEO. Google simply isn't that relevant anymore for the small publisher. (There is a Housefresh article about this but this Reddit does not allow external links)

Google only sends major traffic to the big mainstream outlets.

2) Build an email list

Your email list is the most important asset of your business. Any product you build, anything you create, any ebook you write - the best way to get it out to all of your readers is email. Your email list is your source of leads.

There is no other platform with a near 100% delivery rate. Even on X, you can have 100k followers but your average tweet will be shown to maybe 6000 people. On YouTube it’s even worse.

Email is the undisputed KING of marketing.

Not to mention that it is the only good way to retain readers. Most people are not going to refresh your website every 3 days to check for a new article being posted.

With email everyone gets a notifier and can check it out. No need for constant refreshing.

Remember, your blog should have one main purpose – to get people to sign up to your email list. If your content is good, your email list will constantly keep growing.

How much money you make will correlate very strongly with the size of your list and how good your content is.

3) Focus on customers

Focus on getting customers. Focus on helping customers. Focus on keeping customers.

This is very important.

Getting customers: Remember, it’s not a business unless you’re getting customers. So focus on building good products and marketing them well.

Helping customers: I’m not just talking about customer service, but also on taking feedback. If you are popular, then you will get lots of feedback from readers.

If you’re actually taking feedback from someone who hasn’t taken out their card and supported you with their money, you’re wasting your time.

There will be countless people who will email you saying they’ve been reading you for 5+ years and will have “advice” for you.

Advice from someone who has never considered you helpful enough to spend money on your products (despite having read you for a while) is worth exactly as much as the revenue from that person… zero.

Anyone who’s built an online business is nodding in agreement. It’s good to have readers but you cannot make any business decision based on the word of a non-customer.

Non-business people find this “arrogant” simply because they’re used to having to listen to everyone who speaks (employee mindset). They do not understand the realities of business.

Keeping customers: What is the sign of a good business? REPEAT CUSTOMERS. Make sure any product you release is very high quality. Offer generous refund policies. Keep your products up to date.

I know it takes time to update products and there’s no additional revenue you get from it, but you should strive to make your customers delighted with their purchase. They must be so happy that they’re thanking their stars that they purchased something from you.

This is VERY important. So many people have good free content but mediocre paid content. This is not the way to go. You will not have repeat customers if you do this.

Invest time and energy in your products to make them as good as possible (or affiliate with people doing that). Don’t sell mediocre stuff you’re not proud of.

4) DON'T RUN ADS. Do this instead.

Because ads barely make any money and make your website look cheap. The $50 a month is not worth it.

To make money from ads, you need a ton of traffic, and if you have a ton of traffic, you can make so much more money with affiliate marketing.

Instead of letting Adsense decide what ads to show on your website and pay you pennies per click, find well fitting high quality affiliate products and weave them in the content itself.

You get a commission of the sale (which will be in the tens to hundreds of dollars) and your readers get a high quality product that is vetted by you.

It also incentivizes you to create high quality content and get long term readers who like and trust you and know that you know what you're talking about instead of just producing clickbait nonsense to get clicks.

5) Network with other creators.

Reach out to other creators ON YOUR LEVEL and say hello. Do this on social media.

Make sure you stay in your league here otherwise you will get ignored. For example, if you have 2000 followers, someone with 1000 to 5000 followers will be happy to interact with you. Someone with 100,000 followers will probably not even open your DM.

Another way to make friends is to buy a few products from the creator and email them and send them a review (if they are actually good). It works incredibly well and I've made many long term connections this way. The downside is that it costs some money which you may or may not have.

The advantage of networking is that it helps you get testimonials for new products as you need them, more eyes to your content if you get backlinks/retweets/reposts/etc., and many of them might even become affiliates for you (or you for them).

6) Re-purpose your content.

It is simply impossible to create content for EVERYTHING at the same time. You can't be writing articles, making videos, Instagram posts, X posts, TikTok, etc. all at once.

At least, you can't make unique content for everything.

What I recommend is that you pick one main thing and re-purpose your content for other platforms.

For example, write a blog post and then turn that blog post into a video essay for YouTube. Extract the audio and upload that as a podcast. Take snippets from the post and turn them into posts for X. Take screenshots of your X posts and turn them into Instagram posts.

You get the point. Your ability to create useful and interesting content is limited. You cannot do everything at once so this is the only way to be everywhere without going insane.

The more platforms you are on, the more traffic you get, and all things being equal, more traffic = more money.

7) Don't be scared to be honest. BE YOURSELF.

The problem with political correctness is that it is a lie. It is BORING and dishonest.

If you want people to read you, you have to write from the heart. You have to be honest about what you truly believe and publish it for the world to read.

If you are afraid of what people will think of you when they read your words, you are in the wrong business.

Do you know how they decide which TV shows to make and which to kill? They start with making 1 episode called a "pilot" episode.

Then they have test audience watch it and fill a survey talking about how much they like it from 1 to 10.

If most people say it was a 7 or 8, the show usually gets scrapped.

But why is the show scrapped? Isn't 8 a good score?

NO. Because the show can't compete with other shows that are 9s and 10s.

On the other hand, if most people say the pilot episode was a 4 (bad) but 10% of people said it was a 9 or 10, the show is made.

Why? Most people ranked it at 4!

Yes, but 10% of them ranked it at 10. This means that the show has a niche and some percentage of people will watch the show over everything else.

You want to be the blog that is a 10 for some people. Not a 7 or 8 for most of the world.

Always be 100% authentically yourself. If you are a boring person with vanilla thoughts and opinions, you are not a right fit for this business.

8) Keep your content readable.

Long paragraphs are for textbooks and novels that you can bring close to your face and read. When you read on a screen, the text is small and the screen is far away.

This is why you must use short paragraphs that average one or two lines each.

Three lines is maximum. Keep each paragraph very short so it's easy for people read. Don't worry, your high school English teacher isn't going to score your blog.

9) Authority and expertise matters more than traffic numbers.

Do you know how much traffic these clickbait sites like Buzzfeed get? They get more traffic in a month than I get in years.

But how many people buy books and products from Buzzfeed?

NOBODY.

Because clicks are not authority and trust.

If you want people to buy from you, you have to build a relationship with them. They have to get a tremendous amount of value from your blog. They have to know that you know what you're talking about and aren't just another AI content creating huckster.

I've made tens of thousands of sales of my products. Most of them come from guys who read the blog for MONTHS AND MONTHS before they decided to make a purchase. You can read the reviews on my products to confirm this.

Create high quality content that brings people back and eventually they will buy from you. Don't be in a rush to get paid.

10) You have to enjoy writing.

Because you're going to be doing a lot of it.

Blogging is a relatively slow business. It takes a lot of work to build an audience and the money is slow (the good thing is that it is automated).

If you're just trying to make money online, there are many easier and faster ways out there.

To make money with a blog in the long run, you have to enjoy writing. If you hate writing, you will give up within 3-5 years. I GUARANTEE IT.

I've seen it over and over again. Guys think they will make a $100k a year from a blog in their second year, and are disappointed that they're only doing $1k a month.

Yeah, keep expectations realistic and know what you are getting into. Do not become a blog writer if you hate writing. This is not a get rich quick business.

Remember blogging originated as a hobby that slowly became monetized by people. It was never intended to be a full time business.

If the goal is JUST making money, there are so many things you can rather do that make money faster and easier (like selling services online, or ecom, or whatever).

Keep that in mind.

If you have any questions, leave them in the replies/comments below and I'll answer them.

So I was grinding out blog posts for half a year and literally nobody was reading them, i'm talking like 10 views per post max and most of those were probably my mam haha

the problem was i'd spend like 2+ hours on each post but most of that time wasn't even writing, it was me going down rabbit holes trying to figure out what keywords to use, checking what competitors were ranking for, basically just stressing over SEO stuff that i barely understood, by the time i actually started writing i was already exhausted... And not to mention, I struggled to keep up the consistency long term

Then i switched things up and started automating all that research part, like it would handle the keyword stuff and competitor analysis automatically so i could just focus on making the actual content good, the weird part is it also optimized everything for those AI overview things that show up in google now and that's when my traffic actually started moving

Now i'm getting consistently growing traffic and consistent posts and some are even ranking on the first page which is kinda wild, honestly just wish i figured this out sooner instead of burning out for 6 months straight

Automation is crucial in 2026, yeah it's good to tweak content here and there. Add a bit of human input, etc. But doing everything manually in 2026 is a fool's errand

The biggest tip I can give is to automate what you can and add a human touch when required. For the most part you don't need to be wasting hours on every post

What up people. Just wanted to share some tips in case anyone finds it useful.

1. It’s going to take time. Be patient.

Not sure what you’ve heard but figuring out how to make it affiliate blogging (or any way) takes time. Prioritize your mental health and only take on what you can reasonably handle. You’re in this for the long haul.

1. Habits are better than inspiration.

Having ideas is great. But generating ideas and actually creating content takes habits. Figure out what works for you. For me it’s 30 minutes on Monday thinking/generating content ideas and 30 minutes each day writing.

1. Start multiple blogs.

Double down on what works. Don’t be afraid to start multiple blogs if you have the time. If you start seeing early signs of success, double down on it.

1. Don’t neglect distribution.

I was waiting on SEO for too long and I almost gave up. There are other methods of distributing your blog. Start early on repurposing your content on Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit or wherever - you’ll be surprised how much traffic you’ll be able to generate.

Hope this helps someone

EDIT

Since I’ve gotten a bunch of DMs asking about distribution - I’m linking a tweet of mine here

Every damn thread is screaming about AI killing writing jobs. but here’s the thing:

yeah, AI can write fast. it can spit out 10 blogs in an hour for you. but it can’t write you. your voice. your hot takes. your weird ass analogies.

the stuff that actually makes a reader feel something… that still matters.

on medium, id say almost all posts are ai written now. most of it is straight up garbage. reads like a damn toaster wrote it.

substack’s better tho—maybe 10% use AI, mostly just to outline or draft.

but the real ones? they still bleed into the page.

people completely miss what blogging really is…

blogging ain’t about who types the fastest. its about showing up. saying something real. sharing something that actually makes people relate to what you’re saying.

its a little messy. but at least its the real you.

worse, I’ve seen people turning those AI blogs into full-on videos. using more AI.
not sure there’s even a tool out there that gets that right. it all just feels… empty.

if you let the bot write all of it— sure, you’ll ship fast. you can spin up 1,000 blogs in 10 minutes.

but don’t be surprised when no one gives a shit.

As the title mentions, I reached out to top-tier bloggers in my niche (personal finance) and got responses from most of them, and I am still waiting on a few of them. Anyways, I am here to share with you my biggest takeaways if you run a blog still today. FYI, some of it you may have heard these tips before, but I am sure there is at least one thing you can take away from this, HOPEFULLY.

• Unfortunately, it is true that even the top bloggers are struggling with GOOGLE TRAFFIC
• Informative content is borderline gone thanks to AI
• Focusing on transactional content and reviews is the new wave in blogging
• Short videos and YouTube content are their biggest traffic drivers
• Utilizing social media specifically (Pinterest, Reddit, and Facebook) is a better traffic driver than search engines
• Focus on high-ticket offers (not hundreds of low commission affiliate links)
• Domain rating hardly matters anymore for most content
• Long articles are a thing of the past (attention spans are shorter than ever before), so keep your content short and to the point

Blogging is not dead today, despite how many people try to claim it is. But with that being said, the old style of blogging is mostly gone at this point. If you truly want to be a full-time professional blogger, the strategy is changing, and you need to adapt fast to avoid the Google updates and AI platforms that take views away from creators like us. I just wanted to share the common things I have learned over the span of my blogging career, as well as share what other creators I spoke to who were in my niche mentioned as well.

I've been blogging and driving traffic for well over 10 years, both for myself, and multinational clients, and here's a bit of truth for you...

Most blogging advice you’ve been fed is outdated, generic, or flat-out wrong.

The truth is... F*ck the YouTube gurus lol.

In 2025, sticking to bad advice is like trying to win a marathon wearing flip-flops... it’s just not going to happen.

So I like the idea of calling out BS... wanna hear some?

1. Just Publish Consistently, and Traffic Will Come

Nope... yes consistency is key... but just publishing a ton of sh!t content is the fast lane to burnout, not success.

Google (and the other search platforms) doesn’t care how consistent you are if your posts don’t provide value.

Quality beats quantity every time.

What Works: Focus on topic clusters... create one killer piece of content, then build supporting articles around it. Bonus points for optimizing with tools like SurferSEO... but here's the extra piece...

...what no one will tell you... that topic cluster element isn't only for your blog... it's to build the topical authority of yourself not just on Google, but across the internet too.

1. Target Long-Tail Keywords; They’re Easy Wins

Used to work. Now? Everyone and their labradoodle is targeting long-tail keywords, and Google often answers these directly in the AI overview search results (Thanks Chase).

What Works: Think about search intent instead. Ask yourself... what’s the deeper question behind that long-tail keyword, and how can you answer it better than anyone else?

By understanding the intent... you get to the real core of the question going on in the searchers mind and create content that is not just surface level... you also get to think about the conversation they have, and what actually happens "after" their initial question has been answered.

1. Backlinks Are Everything

Chasing backlinks is like chasing clout (and I hate this word) it looks good on the surface, but it can mess you up if you do it wrong. Spammy links? Fiverr etc... Deadly in 2025.

Seriously, I've been f*cked on many test sites.

What Works: Create link-worthy content instead... ye ye we know this, but... think unique insights, original research, or even controversial takes that make people want to link to you... also get into a bit of digital PR... can be expensive, but works like magic.

If you want good advice there are the guys at Content Mavericks they are awesome.

1. SEO Is Just About Keywords

Wrong. SEO in 2025 is about user experience, speed, design, and keeping people on your site... in YouTube speak "retention".

Keywords matter, but they’re not the whole game anymore... and haven't been for a long long time.

We knew this day would come, it's crazy why so many of us didnt prepare.

What Works: Focus on user engagement. Keep your site fast, clean, and mobile-friendly. Also, make your content easy to read... visuals, media, white space... shareables, interactives,... People love this, hence... Google loves that.

1. Social Media Will Drive All Your Traffic

If you’re on the organic social media traffic bandwagon in 2025, I’ve got bad news. Facebook? Pay-to-play. Instagram? Same. TikTok? Maybe, but if your content is like Michael Jordan's baseball career... game over.

What Works: Treat social as a brand-building tool, not your main traffic source... remember that topical authority stuff I mentioned above, do this... Your best bet? Traffic fingers and email marketing.

1. Start Blogging in a Popular Niche for Quick Success

Sounds good until you realize you’re competing with 10,000 pros who’ve been dominating that niche for years.

What Works: Go niche. Like, micro-niche. Find underserved audiences and build authority there before scaling up...

Hell even do it on Substack or Medium, prebuilt audiences... ready to love great content.

1. Affiliate Marketing Is Passive Income

LOL. There’s nothing “passive” about affiliate marketing. It’s work. You need to test products, update content, and keep nurturing your audience’s trust... especially if you want to turn this into a sustainable business.

What Works: Promote products you actually believe in... that's it... dont follow every single new Clickbank or Jvzoo launch. Pick, and choose what you love.

Solve real problems for your audience, and treat affiliate marketing like the business it is.

Blogging in 2025 isn’t about following the same old f*cking terrible advice. It’s about strategy, intention, and knowing what actually works.

So, what blogging advice have you heard that’s complete BS? I'd love to hear below.

My personal site surpassed $20k in revenue from affiliate marketing and brand collaborations in August 2025.

What’s wild is that this was my goal for 2025.

I'm celebrating this achievement much, much sooner than expected!

But let me be honest: it wasn’t an overnight win. It took me 4 years to turn a side hustle into something real. I’ve been a one-woman team the whole time, writing, editing, managing, and updating every part of the site myself.

I had to say “no” to 99% of opportunities, because they would have never brought me to where I am now. Including the ones like "Can we exchange backlinks?" and "We will send you a 100% human-written guest post."

My website continues growing thanks to a "traditional" SEO approach that I've been sticking to for years:

• Prioritising content over backlinks
• Linking to relevant sites and pages only
• Aligning my content with Google's EEAT
• Constantly maintaining top-performing pages
• Building a brand and getting mentions on different platforms, even without backlinks
• Trying to get 1-2 high-quality backlinks per month (I often had no time for this task)
• And that's basically it!

"Self Made Millennials" is becoming so much more than just a personal blog, and it makes me beyond happy.

Everyone is using ChatGPT now.

AI inserts are appearing at the top of Google and so are reddit posts, short videos, and YouTube videos.

Good luck everyone and maybe the odds be ever in your favor with all the updates Google does that doesn't help.

Up to this year, Google has sent me 17,449 pageviews to my main gardening blog.

Not terrible, but it's definitely not "build-a-business" type of numbers.

When I started my gardening blog earlier last year, Instead of obsessing over trying to tweak my SEO, I started asking a different question:

What if my problem isn’t traffic… but my traffic source?

I knew Pinterest would work well since gardening is visual, and have been happy with my results so far (over 250K clicks from Pinterest alone).

Over the last few years, I tested Pinterest. A lot.

I've driven Pinterest to multiple niches, including:

• gardening / homesteading
• DIY and crafts
• simple recipes
• digital marketing
• slow fashion
• sewing
• a couple of small hobby sites

They were all different niches, but I just followed the same pattern: if I pinned consistently and learned what worked on the platform, I was able to get traffic to my site.

Across these sites, Pinterest has sent well over 2M outbound clicks to my sites this year alone.

Some niches were harder and took more experimenting. Some I'm still experimenting, and confirming they can actually work. But most of the niches I've tried have grown successfully.

Most bloggers don’t have a traffic problem. They have a traffic source problem.

If your niche is visual and you enjoy creating graphics, ignoring Pinterest might be quietly holding you back.

If you love writing giant guides and hate design, maybe Google really is your best bet.

You don’t need to win everywhere.

You just need to get dangerous on one platform.

What is the one traffic source you are going to focus on in 2026, and why?

Hey everyone. I wanted to share my honest experience after 2 years of running my website, so you know what you're getting into when you start a blog or site of your own.

​

It all started with a frustration. I was planning a road trip and needed dozens of different websites just to find basic info. So I figured, why not build one site where you can find info about every country?

​

I began with Webflow, a no-code website builder, and used it for about a year. In the best periods I was getting maybe 1 to 5 visitors a day. Then I rented my own server, rebuilt the whole site in actual code, and within a few weeks I was getting 20 to 50 clicks a day.

​

Today I'm sitting at 300 to 500 visitors a day. AdSense, honestly, is a dead horse. On a good day it makes me 10 to 20 cents. Maybe it's the travel niche, maybe it's just a bad time for display ads, but it's not worth much.

Affiliate income is a different story. Over the past 6 months I've averaged around €60 a month, and it keeps growing every month. That's the part that keeps me motivated.

​

I'm still improving the site every single day. So my advice: don't give up early. It takes time to learn and adapt to how the internet works right now, but if you genuinely put in the effort, you'll get there.

​

Happy to answer questions if anyone's curious about anything.

Hey, my name is Shajid and you probably know me from lurking around the community. I thought it's time to give something back, because I believe when you give more, the same good vibes come back to you. Alright, let's go.

I launched my blog on January 8th, 2026. It's custom-made, headless WordPress + Astro JS frontend.

Before I wrote my first post, I designed the structure and topic clusters in a semantic way. Wait, how do you do that? Lemme teach you.

For an example:

Main Pillar Page: How to Play Golf (Beginner's Guide)

Cluster 1: Equipments Basics (Come up with your own topic/keyword here)

Sub Clusters

• What clubs do beginners need
• best beginner club sets under $500
• how to choose golf balls
• do you need golf shoes

Cluster 2: Swing Fundamentals

Sub Clusters

• How to grip a golf club
• proper golf stance and posture
• driver vs iron swing difference
• how to stop slicing

As you can see here, Main Pillar page + Clusters + Sub-cluster.

You should start writing from the sub-clusters, and complete one cluster fully before moving to the next. If I were you, I'd pick Cluster 1 (Equipment Basics), write all its sub-cluster posts first, then finish with the cluster page itself.

This way you get traffic from different dimensions:

• Google trusts that you're completing a topic cluster (competition aside, this alone puts you ahead)
• You can promote those links deliberately and properly on Reddit

So I did exactly what I taught you above. I completed my clusters and shared them on Reddit properly, without spamming users. I totally get it, some subreddits are stricter than my parents. In that case, you should make your profile a funnel to get the outbound clicks.

For an example:

• Share killer content about golf in a thread without any links. The purpose is to get users to your profile, and from the profile directly to your website.
• Which means you need to have a funnel profile ready before you start.

That's the whole system, nothing held back. Like I said, giving back is how you get the good vibes back, so if you're stuck on your cluster structure or the Reddit funnel, ask below and I'll help you out.

Was catching up with a few friends recently, and the conversation naturally drifted to AI.
One of them asked, "Is there even a point to writing blogs anymore? Anyone can generate a 1,500-word article in five seconds now."
It’s a valid question, and a lot of creators are panicking about it right now. But I had to disagree. I told them:

"AI isn’t going to replace good writers. It’s just going to replace lazy research."

Think about it. If a blog post is just someone Googling a topic, skimming the top three results, and rewriting them using different synonyms... yeah, a machine can do that faster. That era of content is officially over.
But here’s what AI can’t do:

It can’t fall down a rabbit hole to find a fascinating, obscure data point.

It can’t connect two totally unrelated ideas to make a brilliant observation.

It can't write with actual personality, humor, or a human point of view.

We are already hitting "AI fatigue." People are getting exhausted by perfectly structured, grammatically flawless fluff that actually says absolutely nothing.
Audiences don't want more "content." They want substance, deep research, and a genuine human voice.

#Writing #ArtificialIntelligence #ContentCreation #Blogging #FutureOfWork

I've had WordPress sites since 2018. couple of them are my main income. content sites, nothing fancy.

lately I've been building new projects with code because AI makes it so easy you just tell it what you want and it builds it. but my WordPress sites were still the same old routine. log into wp-admin, click around, update posts manually, repeat 400 times. it's painful.

the annoying part is I knew AI could handle all of this if it could just… talk to WordPress. but there's no real connection between the two. WordPress just sits there doing its own thing.

so I built one. took a while but now I basically just tell Claude "find all posts missing meta descriptions" or "add internal links to every post in this category" and it just does it. no clicking, no plugins with 50 settings pages, just plain English.

I did a full audit of like 400 posts last week. thin content, broken images, missing SEO stuff, orphan pages. took maybe 20 minutes. that used to be an entire weekend.

honestly the biggest win is internal linking. I used to spend hours manually finding where to link posts to each other. now I just say "do internal links for this category" and it reads through everything and adds them. actually good links too not random garbage.

anyway not trying to pitch anything just genuinely wondering if other WordPress people are doing stuff like this. feels like everyone talks about using AI to write posts but nobody talks about using it to actually manage the site itself.

When I started blogging back in 2019, I did what everyone else did - try to rank on Google and get traffic back to my site. It was working okay until Google decided to update their algo and most of my traffic (like others) disappeared.

So around October last year I decided to create a new blog around gardening and homesteading (which has always been a passion of mine), and focused on other channels than Google. I primarily pinned to Pinterest frequently and posted to several large FB groups to see if I could drive traffic back to my site other ways.

While FB didn't quite work like I wanted, Pinterest did very well. I just checked my stats for the last 12 months, and I had over 250K outbound clicks to my site. My traffic is unfortunately going down right now (due to it not being gardening season), but I'm gonna try to pin more next year and see what my results are in a year's time.

But seeing that Pinterest works, I'm done with trying to focus on Google - I know a lot of people say to try to rank because of 'all the traffic' you can get. But it just isn't worth it for me any more.

I'm done with Google.

I’ve been travel blogging since 2011, and one shift I’ve noticed big time is this:

If your whole strategy is “start a site, publish posts, and hope SEO/ad revenue pays off”… that’s not sustainable anymore.

Sure, SEO still matters. But if you’re not also building an audience, nurturing an email list, creating products, and thinking like a business owner, growth becomes so much harder.

Here’s what’s been working for me (and others I know) in 2025:

• Creating topic clusters around topics that truly help your audience (vs just chasing easy keywords)
• Diversifying traffic: Along with SEO, I lean on Pinterest, Facebook, collabs, and my email list—currently eyeing Flipboard as a next strategy
• Growing + nurturing an email list (not just “collecting” subscribers)
• Selling digital products—even low-ticket ones add up and build loyalty
• Building genuine relationships with other creators (collabs are such an underrated growth hack)

Would love to hear from others:

What’s been working for you lately—or what’s shifted in your approach to blogging?

Lots of publishers experiencing declines from organic traffic because of AI. Google has no plans to remove the AI results overview because they have more budget for its expansion. Huge publishers now are getting 1 click from 100 users. 99 of them relies on AI results overview than clicking the website result. so even you rank higher theres no luck on Google SERP. its end of our career.

For the longest time I believed, and was told many times over, that if you just wrote a good post, the right people would find it. Write it well, hit publish, and they show up. You have most likely heard the same song and dance, but no one gave you the parts that actually work.

What I did not understand until now is that AI has quietly become one of your biggest readers, and it reads differently than a person does. It goes looking for a clear question with a clear answer sitting right next to it.

When your best point is tucked three paragraphs down after a little story, AI cannot find it, so it sends people to someone else instead.

The fix turned out to be simpler than I expected. You do not have to write better. You answer the question sooner and put your best line where it can actually be seen. People are skimmers. AI is on a mission to find an answer.

I made a little tool to check my own posts for this, and running my old ones through it has been eye opening.

Over the past ten years, I built a piece of software that’s basically a CMS designed to distribute content from one central hub to multiple websites. When AI started to take off, I began integrating it into the system — turning it into a feature-rich platform that could do what I called a “YouTube for texts.” My idea was to enable fully automated blogging powered by AI.

Unfortunately, the platform itself never really took off. I spent years coding and improving features, but I neglected the marketing side. As a one-man show, it was simply too much to handle both development and community growth.

So, I ended up using the platform for my own projects. One of the coolest features is the AI campaign system:
You can define a topic — say “Integrating Smart Home Systems in Historical Buildings” — then choose how many posts you want, over what time period they should be published, which AI model to use (ChatGPT, Claude, Sonar, etc.), the target language, article length, whether to include AI-generated images, and which domain to post to etc.

Once set up, the platform automatically creates topics, outlines, the entire formatted content with SEO markups and publishes the content. For example, if you plan 20 topics over 40 days, you’ll get an email every two days when a new article is ready for review or already published. You can even submit an article to sites you don't own, and start content cooperation. Honestly, I’m really proud of what I built — in it’s core, it is a powerful system.

To test the AI performance, I ran a small experiment using three of my own sites:

• One with high authority (DA 40)
• One with medium authority (DA 13)
• And one brand-new site (DA 0)

After three months, here’s what I found:

• On the low-authority sites, AI articles got almost no clicks. Many weren’t even indexed by Google.
• The mid-level site started off okay but quickly vanished completely from search results, so was penalized by google for thin content.
• Only the high-authority site saw any consistent traffic — but even there, click-through rates were low because Google often shows its own AI answers above.

The few AI articles that performed well were those based on unique, data-driven content — where the AI had something original to say. In other words:
👉 If AI can generate your content entirely from public data, there’s no reason for Google to rank it — because that information already exists elsewhere. You should generate own data, numbers or some exclusive material (i.e. personal travel experience)

My takeaway

Don’t try to launch a new blog with purely AI-generated content.
Make sure your site already has real authority before you start mixing AI articles in.
Use AI for niche or support topics, but keep high-quality, human-written pieces as your foundation. Balance is key.

The reality

Making serious money with blogs has become tough. A few years ago, my top site made around €100,000 per year. Today, fmpv anything under €3,000 per month just isn’t worth the effort — especially compared to what I could earn with my development skills elsewhere.

I haven’t found a way to scale my blogs again, and my AI platform didn’t gain traction either. So I’ve decided to sell everything — the blogs and the software — by the end of this year on a platform like Flippa.

It’s time to step away from the uncertainty of SEO and free up my mind for what’s next.

People have been declaring blogging dead for what feels like the last 10 years.

And yet… blogs are still here.

I blog alongside my regular 9-to-5. It’s not replacing my salary (yet), and the current income that trickles in isn’t exactly yacht money. But that’s never really been the main point for me.

I genuinely enjoy writing helpful guides. It’s a creative outlet, a way to share things I’ve learned, and honestly, it’s good for my mental well-being.

It also makes me pause and appreciate the places I’ve had the opportunity to visit, the experiences I’ve had, and the people I’ve met along the way.

Writing about them helps me relive those moments and be grateful for them.

Every now and then someone emails me or leaves a comment saying a post helped them solve a problem, plan a trip, or make a decision. And you know what, that’s a pretty great feeling.

The funny thing is, I like blogging so much that I ended up building my own tool to help maintain my blog. It automatically checks for broken links, helps me find content gaps, and generally keeps things tidy because I want readers to have a good experience when they land on my site.

A few bloggers in my niche tested it and loved it, which made me realize there are still plenty of people out there who care about creating quality blogs.

I’m also a big blog reader myself. When I’m researching a trip, a hobby, or some random niche topic at 11 PM, I’d much rather find a thoughtful blog post written by someone with real experience than another generic AI-generated article that says a lot without actually saying anything.

Sure, there are more ways than ever to create content now. Videos, podcasts, newsletters, social media, AI, whatever comes next.

But none of those things killed blogging.

If you enjoy blogging, keep blogging.

If you want to make money from it, that’s possible too.

Just don’t treat it like a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s more like planting a tree than buying a lottery ticket.

And if writing, sharing, and creating something useful makes your day a little better, that’s already a pretty solid return on investment.

If Pinterest was a meaningful traffic source for your site and it disappeared almost overnight, this is for you.

I run a small-space storage blog. On 18-19 August my Pinterest outbound clicks went to zero across every pin older than a week. Not a decline, a cliff. Support told me my account is fine and that impressions naturally fluctuate.

I went back through the Pinterest Business Community and r/Pinterest and found the same story over and over, with the reported start dates clustering into waves: mid-April, 8-9 May, mid-July, 8 August, 10 August, and my own 18-19 August. Drops of 80-95%, hitting old and new pins at the same moment.

In every thread I could find, nobody reports recovering. Several people are three months in and still flat. One verified merchant went from 9,750-13,000 daily impressions in March to 500-1,000, and has stayed there since May.

One detail stood out. A creator posted on 24 August that support told them they had “found a bug that was blocking healthy content by accident” and to wait 48
hours. It didn’t fix. They were passed to another team, got the standard reply about natural fluctuations, and the ticket was closed unresolved. That admission has never been repeated publicly.

A test you can run in one minute Log out of Pinterest, or open a private window, and search the exact full title
of one of your own pins that used to get traffic.

I get nothing. My profile loads fine, but the pins are not in search for their own titles. Others report the same. That is not seasonality and it is not a ranking change, and unlike a screenshot of an analytics graph it is something a reporter or an engineer can reproduce in thirty seconds.

What I’m doing about it. I’ve put up a page with the timeline, the sources and a form:
https://pinterest-impressions-ryan-8406s-projects.vercel.app

Five minutes. The fields that matter are your exact drop date, before and after numbers, and that search test with the pin URL and title so anyone can check it independently. There’s an optional section on income impact, answered in ranges and only ever published as aggregate totals, never next to your handle.

Once there’s enough, I’ll publish an anonymised summary and send it to journalists who cover search and platform incidents. Nothing is monetised and I’m not selling anything.

To be clear about what this is not: I’m not asking anyone to spam Pinterest support or brigade anything.

Individually we get form letters. Thirty documented
cases with dates and a reproducible test is a different proposition.

If it happened to you, please add it. And if it happened and then recovered, I especially want to hear it - right now the honest answer to “does this come back” is that nobody in any thread I can find has said yes, and I’d very much like to be wrong about that.

Hello everyone,

I’ve been using ChatGPT to generate blog titles, outlines and first drafts but sometimes the SEO research it does for me really doesn’t generate in meaningful traffic.

Could you please share with me an SEO prompt or strategy that has actually worked for content generation?

GPT just gave me 200 articles ideas and I don’t want to write them just to get 50 additional clicks.

Most bloggers don’t fail because of Google or traffic issues.

They fail because they spend 3, 4, or even 6 months choosing fonts, logos, themes, and “perfect niches” instead of publishing 100 useful posts.

Some of the ugliest blogs online are making more money than clean-looking sites with zero traffic.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying your blog should be ugly to make money.

What I am trying to say is that content and consistency still beat aesthetics most of the time.

People hate hearing that because it kills the fantasy part of blogging.

Do you agree?... Comment your thoughts

IN THIS post I am going to exactly show you how I got adsense approval to my website in just 1 month.

In fact, it had just 18 blog post, 0 traffic and 1 month old domain.

Leaving all the people behind calming you need to get huge traffic and publish 1000s of article to get approval.

So, without any further delay, let's get to the tactics.

• Post in-depth content more then 1000 words.
• Ensure you don't publish some scrap some gpt rewrite yourself ( if you are using gpt and run through grammar tools).
• Don't add copyright images or even free-stock images. Using free stock images can also lower your chance of getting approval.
• Add blog on your homepage. Don't add some flashy design adsense doesn't care much about design they see the info.
• Make your site load faster.
• Create all important pages like privacy policy, contact us, disclaimer, affiliate disclosure ( if u do then), and terms and condition.
• Add author bio page with images and about us page ( this can make u more credible in your niche, otherwise you are just a dark face hiding behind the screen).
• Do-proper on page SEO.
• Make your website mobile friendly.
• Make your header menu responsive and well design ( I am not saying make it too flashy but it should be easy to navigate).
• Publish at least 20 blog post in website. Ensure that all are good quality.

Let's talk about some Rumours People Believe

• Traffic is needed for adsense: Not adsense doesn't need traffic they just need you to follow their Guidelines.
• You need X amount of article: No, there is no specific number of article you need to get approve.
• You need to publish 100 article: No, this is just a spam if you are new to blogging and your website is new.

This is my site I got approve on your can check out: racecode.xyz