Why I May Quit Blogging in 20182018 will be my 17th year writing on the internet, but is it now time for my dot-com bubble to burst? Here's Why I May Quit Blogging in 2018
Believe it or not, 201,8 will be my 17th year of writing online. In that time, I've seen blogs come and go, technology change, new platforms, old platforms, and the dot-com boom and bust. I've weathered it all, but is it time for my dot-com bubble to burst?
I first got online with a free website host (which has since disappeared into the depths of the ethernet) to share some programming code between college friends. This became a basic tutorial site as I helped my friends develop their programming knowledge. When I got my first car, I wrote a few guides on replacing the speakers and radio since these were complex tasks and no other guides were around.
Fast forward to now, and that free site has evolved into six dedicated websites and four niche sites covering my hobbies, from astronomy to photography and paranormal to design. I have written over 1,300 articles and tutorials, 70 galleries and over 4,500 photos.
This all sounds very successful, so why would I want to quit blogging?
It all comes down to the time-effort-money triangle. It takes a lot of time and effort to produce this content by myself, and even more time promoting this content and attracting visitors to my sites, and the rewards are getting less and less. It's becoming increasingly difficult to drive traffic to my sites; the month-on-month hits are going down, and as a result, the small amount of ad revenue I get is also going down. Getting social shares, likes, or comments on posts isn't easy. The problem isn't helped by the sheer quantity of content scrapers stealing my articles and photos and the constant bombardment of spam.
Due to the sheer number of websites on the internet, it's becoming increasingly difficult to get organic traffic from Google, and the few folks I do get visiting my site are not sharing on social media or engaging. I'm stuck in a catch-22 situation - I can't get the social shares because nobody visits my site, and nobody visits my site because it's not shared on social media.
I'm not running these sites to profit; since I registered my first domain name, I've been making a loss, and all my articles and tutorials are free. Annual hosting costs and domain name fees alone cost more than I spend on annual car insurance and vehicle tax combined.
So now I have a choice: either spend a load of money getting an expert in to help drive quality traffic and hope I can increase revenues enough to cover the time and effort I put into my sites, or quit blogging, close my sites forever and sell off the domain names. It'll be a tough choice, but I can't continue putting so much time and effort into them and not get anything back.
Have you been through this dilemma? What would you do in this situation? Do you have any suggestions on how to improve my sites? Please let me know in the comments below.
