Notionet

Everytime I think of blogging as a dying business, I also happen to think of newspapers and when I do, I recall this guy across the streets who has been selling newspapers for more than a decade. Actually as we speak, he is expanding his business. So I tell myself “if people are still reading newspapers in this digital era then blogging is not dying any sooner” but that also means some traffic will be entirely lost to newspaper enthusiasts. 

Honestly speaking, however bad it might sound, the future of blogging is very unclear. Its unclear because one blog is getting a million views in a day while another is getting 10 views in a week. We can talk of Search engine optimisation but speaking from experience, you will need more than that to compete with sites like Huffspot and Wikipedia. Something like 15years of uptime or a $10,000 budget for advertising every year.

Statistics shows that 92% of the search traffic goes to the first sites in the google’s search results. This simply means little to no traffic to the small blogs trying to get out of the shaddows. It also means that unless you get your blog to the top, you will never get anything worthwhile out of it. Which is like trying to get the whole audience to stand on the podium. Its a hard thing to do. Hard enough to make it impossible. Right?

It  never goes wrong. It starts wrong.

So with all this going on, how will you tell whether blogging is for you or not and whether it has a future or not? To someone who gets atleast 10 comments at the end of every post, it can be a simple decision to make but not the same to one who did not manage at least 100 follows in 2020 even after following all the guidelines from experts. 

Should you be blogging in 2021?

The first thing is to know why you started blogging

Whether blogging has a future or not, not only depends on readers but also you as the writer. So the question here is, “Why did you start blogging?”

Maybe you did it out of passion, to give back to the society, to make money or just out of personal reasons. The only issue is sometimes this reason can change. It happens. Like when you just post a simple article about yourself and get 100 likes, 30 comments. This effortless achievement might direct your focus on likes instead of your initial goal.

Its important to constantly remind yourself why you started blogging. If it was out of passion, do you still have that desire? if it was for passive income, have you made a dime out of it after blogging for atleast five years. Because nothing should stop you from blogging except for the same reason you started doing it.

If blogging is giving you what you expected, then blogging is for you. If its not maybe its time to let it go. Leaving you with a quote on this one, someone said, “it never goes wrong, it starts wrong.”

Second is to know why people read blogs and which ones specifically

Its good to have a clear understanding of your industry and a part of that is knowing what its building blocks are made of. Why would anyone leave all other sources of infor and choose to read a blog. Also, why would anyone leave all other blogs in the same niche, covering the same topics and choose a specific blog? 

Those specific reasons whether sensible or not, are they subject to change? Its just like football teams and their fans. Lack of performance is not enough to make a team lose its loyal fans but there are inevitable things that can make a team eventually loose its fans. Like how the Covid 19 would not allow fans to watch live games in a stadium.

You might also want to read;

• Blogging Has Changed its Appearance
• A better way to market your blog/website
• What I learned from my most successful posts

When it comes to blogging, there are changes that might affect it in a big way. Things like copyright laws, Privacy protection regulations like the GDPR and upcoming trends I.e Youtubing/ vlogging. And though some of these changes will not make blogs lose their followers it can shift thier activeness to other platforms.

As a writer, you could have already thought of creating a youtube channel as an alternative out of the feeling that blogging is not capturing enough viewers. Or maybe you chose to stick to blogging because its your passion. Its choices like this that serve as insights to know whether you should be blogging or not. They can also help you know where blogging is heading because there many people like you making the same choices.

Third is to look at what you blog about and what people are looking for.

Readers play a big role in the overall success of any blog. So comparing what you are writing and what people are looking for, do you think your blog has a future? Does blogging have a future?

If you look at the most visited sites in the world, they are mostly online stores, adult sites, betting sites, search engines and video platforms like youtube.  You might as well notice “Weather” as one of the most searched terms in the web sometimes. Most of the content in this kind of sites is not one that you will find in most blogs. That is a red flag because it shows people this days are not only interested in content but also its format/type. To some, watching is becoming a better choice than reading

Fourth is to know who and how many  share the same topics with you

Is there a gap left for you? If the top ranking blogs are covering simillar topics as yours, its rational to say you don’t have a place in that niche. Imagine that all the recognised stores in town are selling the same items yet some of those that people need cant be found in any of those stores. It means any new store that plans to follow the same trend will be planning to make loses. Not unless they create a better way of selling the same items that the other stores aren’t using.

So, the more saturated the market is, the less the demand. If a marketplace only sells vegetables, then there will be a need to create more marketplaces to accomodate other products. If blogging platforms are replaced by other content sharing platforms then blogging will fade away for sure.

Last and most importantly is how much traffic you have and how much you are willing to input.

At the end of it all, it will always be about you. It starts with you and ends with you. Today we are talking of Covid 19 affecting businesses but there are people still making six figures. You could be the die hard when it comes to blogging and that could be working for you.

If you are willing go give what it takes. Who knows? Maybe its all that blogging needs to keep its place. Afterall change starts with a single person.

Conclusion

Though it has been said that blogging is a dying business, the signs show that this statement is subjective. That’s it depends with which blogs and who is blogging. Using art as an example, if art was to lose its value, its the upcoming artists who will be greatly affected. Because established artist have already gained a reasonable following. Even if they fail to get new clients in the future, art will still be a worthwhile endeavor.

So, should you be blogging in 2021?  You just need to read the signs.

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