Should I keep my blog despite AI and Google decimating my organic traffic and income? Would I let over one million of my words bite the dust? Could I use a third-party platform to reduce or even eliminate my costs?
These are just a few of the questions that have been racing through my mind in recent months. I’m probably not alone in asking if I should keep my blog despite AI concerns.
The initial turning point was November 30, 2022, with the arrival of ChatGPT and access to free AI. But I didn’t notice any significant effect on my traffic until almost one year later. It wasn’t ChatGPT that caused the problem; it was how search engines began using AI that changed the game.
In September 2023, Google changed its algorithms in a major update that sent traffic into a nosedive for many sites and bloggers. And then, in May 2024, AI Overviews arrived, and that changed Google and online search forever.
The new reality of blogging after AI
If you own a self-hosted blog or website, you know that the cost of running a blog is not cheap. Hosting charges, domain registration fees, and a few premium plugins or services add up.
When you’re dependent on steady site visitors to cover these costs, the loss of organic traffic due to AI makes you reconsider your options.
In my case, it’s been a drop from around 3,000 to about 500 visits per day. As my site depends on ads for its income, the financial loss has been substantial.
However, my fixed costs haven’t changed over the same period, nor has my time investment.
Over the past year, I’ve tried to save money where possible, but the core costs remain the same.
Financially, the end result is that it’s line ball now, and even breaking even feels like a win.
I know what my accountant would recommend, which is not surprising at all.
If it was a failing business venture, it makes sense. However, blogging is not only financial; it’s also emotional. It’s a connection.
Throwing in the towel after more than twenty years of blogging is simply not me, so I had to look carefully at my options. I wanted to keep my blog, but I had to be realistic.
So, a few months ago, I started to test, check, and consider the possibilities.
What options did I consider before deciding?
The most logical option was to move to a free blogging platform. Blogger, WordPress, Wix, and Weebly were the obvious choices.
While exporting and importing my blog is possible with most, the big drawback with some is that exporting again later is not quite so simple. That means being locked in.
Then there are the restrictions, such as file size, bandwidth limits, and ad implementation. To avoid these constraints, the only way is to pay. Then free can turn into something quite expensive in the long-term.
Another idea was to move to a third-party platform such as Substack or Medium. Both of these look appealing on the surface. I could concentrate on writing only, with no need to be concerned about site maintenance, security, and updates.
While they are not true blogging platforms, they do offer the opportunity to earn through gaining subscribers or page reads.
I looked at Substack initially. I know it has become popular with many disenchanted bloggers, but one thing kept bugging me: it relies on paying email subscribers.
My inbox is full of unwanted newsletters every morning, so how would I react? Would I pay $5.00 a hit to get more?
My next option was Medium. I’ve been publishing for free on the platform for years, and I always get a few reads per day. But to join the Partner Program, I would need to pay $50 a year upfront, and then hope I was approved.
Even if successful, earnings very much depend on “boosted” articles and publishing with large publishers on Medium. Neither of these is guaranteed, and is more like a lottery.
I checked a lot of users on Reddit; most were earning peanuts, and many didn’t even recoup their joining fee.
The big red flag for me was that if I paywalled my articles on Medium, I would lose a lot of readers who can currently access my articles for free.
On top of that, if a reader arrived from Google Search, the content would be paywalled and cut off after the first few sentences.
My last option was to give up, close down my site, and then…?
The reasons I chose to keep my blog despite AI traffic losses
The overriding reason I decided to keep my blog online is one word: Control.
Yes, it comes at a cost, but keeping my blog lets me have the freedom to choose what direction I can take.
Sure, blogging after AI is much more challenging, time-consuming, and at times, frustrating.
But I can choose what I write, how I write, and when I write. I’m also in control of sharing or syndicating my writing.
That’s why moving away and losing the self-hosted blog benefits is a price I’m not prepared to pay.
No matter how attractive superficially, all third-party platforms pose risks with policy changes, violation risks, revenue sharing alterations, rule changes, AI content penalties, and, lastly, a platform going out of business. Remember Google Plus?
In other words, you have zero control, only restraints.
Choosing to keep my blog going is not a wise financial decision; it’s an emotional decision I can live with. It’s me, it’s mine, and it’s yours too. Even if it costs me to do it.
Conclusion
The world never stands still, and it seems especially so nowadays.
AI has tipped the online world on its head, and no one knows for sure where it will lead or end.
The only certitude is that more volatile times are ahead for the internet, search engines, site owners, bloggers, and readers.
Yet, I plan to be a part of it and continue to make my voice heard, even if AI steals every single word I write (and never gives me any credit).
While on the topic of AI theft, here’s an interesting statistic to ponder. In 2023, my site got around 5,000 hits per day. As I said before, 3,000 were human site visitors, and the other 2,000 were search engine bots like Google and Bing.
Today, my site is hit between 7,000 and 10,000 times per day, of which 500 are human, and the rest are bots and crawlers. So my site is more popular than ever, with thieving AI bots!
But there’s one last little benefit I get from owning my blog over third-party platforms—I can choose to cut off AI crawlers with the click of a button, and I might soon do that.
This short article isn’t advice. It’s simply how I decided to keep my blog despite AI and shrinking returns. My heart overruled my head.
Related Reading: How To Make Your Writing Stand Out From AI Slop
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