Is Blogging Dead In 2018? Personal Branding Insight

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My Blog

I’ve had the Life Success Engineer blog since the beginning of 2017. Before that, in 2016, I also had a Youtube channel and a blog, but I decided to rebrand it as Life Success Engineer, so I have good experience when it comes to blogging. I’ve been doing it firsthand now for a good 20 months, so I’ve learned a lot about the struggles that come up when you brand yourself in this way, as well as the successes that are possible.

Just to bring you up to speed, I’m now at a point where my blog is hovering around 100 visitors per day. My email list is growing every single day, I have launched products and services, I have made money from blogging. I’ve actually made more money from my Life Success Engineer brand than I have from my previous career as an electrical engineer. So I really want to share with you how you can brand yourself and discuss the idea of blogging being dead.

Is Blogging Dead?

I see a lot of people saying that blogging is dead and SEO is dead. But the truth is, it’s just changed. A lot of things like this change rapidly over a short period of time. I started in 2016, initially looking into websites, blogging, what it means to blog, what it means to brand yourself, what is content marketing etc…

The truth is, it’s been a great learning curve and I’ve learned some valuable skills, but gone are the days when you could simply write an article and you would just get tons of traffic to you all the time. There was a time when you could create websites and get ranking on the first pages of Google with minimal effort. Those days are gone.

The truth is that the biggest search engines, Google and Youtube, those two have changed so much over the last few years. The reason Google and Youtube are so difficult to break into the top results of is because they don’t know you. When you start a website, everything goes against you. They take into account how old your website is, how much content you have, how many links there are to your website – essentially, what is the web of your website.

Starting Out

If you’re just getting going, it’s going to be a slow start. The truth is that Google are not going to share any traffic with you until they can confirm that you’re actually helping people and creating great content.

What I experienced for the first six months of my website and Youtube channel, nobody was watching any of my content, videos, blogs, podcasts, nothing. To this date, I’ve now got over 1000 subscribers, but for the first 12 months, I only got to 100 subscribers.

I’m seeing a lot of acceleration now with my channel because I believe what happens is Youtube and Google have started to see some consistency. They’re starting to see that I’m here to stick around. That is so important when you brand yourself. Google just wants to see that you’re not a fake news bot.

If, as you grow, you improve your SEO skills and are exploring different ways that people can find you, that is the last piece of the puzzle.

Why?

People search on Google or Youtube to answer a specific query that they have. That question could be, “Is blogging dead?” Searching this term is maybe how you found my website. I have identified that as something that people would potentially type in. If you just focus in around your passion or your niche – what you really want to achieve with your blog – that will aid consistency.

If you want to be consistent with your content, it simply must be something you’re really interested. While blogging can make you good money, you do not want to be chasing the money and fame because you won’t catch it. To be successful, you must focus in on serving the people who see your content.

My Philosophy

Everything that I’ve done on my channel is surrounding areas that I have made a success of like Online Arbitrage, online business and personal development. That has been because I am living and breathing these things. I am passionate about them and that has been key in sustaining my content over these past couple of years.

I know the results will come – and they are – if I am focused in on that number one thing; serving people.

What You Should Do?

If you’re starting out or looking to start, always have the mindset that you’re not going to see any type of results for a while. You can start by publishing an article, then next week you can publish another and so on, and for a while, you won’t see much in terms of traffic. However, what is going to happen is you will build up a huge library of content that is purposefully helping people and then people will start to find you and see that you’ve made lots of valuable focused content.

It’s not going to happen right away and there’s no point pretending it will. But if you go into it with the mindset that this is to help people, you’re committed long term and you’re in a particular nice, you at least stand a chance.

While you can’t expect to see results right away, it’s also very important to have a long term vision which you’re working towards. Results are so much easier to measure against a wider vision. You may want the freedom to travel and work, you may want total financial security in the long run, whatever it is, you need to identify your goal.

Collaboration

If you’re focused and creating great content, there will always be other people on the same journey who will be able to help you grow. Always be open to dialogue with other bloggers and just other people in general. Once you start engaging with your audience, you can get a much better idea of what people want to see!

This will lead to you creating information products, courses, books specifically for the niche that you are committed to. I know it takes time. I have videos from a while ago which are just now getting into the 1000s of views. It is a real lag in time to see the results, but it is a great example of how having discipline and consistency WILL get you there.

So, Is Blogging Really Dead?

No, blogging is not dead, at all. You just have to be a bit more patient these days. If you can stick to your goal, publish regularly, publish some form of quality and really add value to your field, you will see success!

If you’re starting a blog or struggling, let me know in the comments what you would find useful!