I wasted so much time writing about my husband yesterday. I need to sort out my present to lead to a successful future. Our bank account is dwindling.
I’ve really been struggling with what to do with my time. How can I earn money to replace what I was making? What do I want to do for the next 15 years?
I have all these skills from working on the websites but it’s so exhausting and overwhelming trying to keep up with all this technology and advice and as a small business owner, trying to do everything myself to keep costs down.
I Was a One-Woman Show
I didn’t grow the sites correctly. Looking back, this has really been an issue. We’ve had multiple sites and never hired a team to help scale them. It was me and my husband. I would write blog posts, take pictures, do the links, and publish the posts but never could write them quickly to produce volume.
And trying to do this across several sites AND being a slow writer… well, it just wasn’t enough.
Even when we hired writers for my larger site… spending thousands of dollars… I would spend hours rewriting them… they weren’t good articles.
Lest I become even more upset, I will not discuss now what my husband was doing during this time.
Now I’m Down to Two Money-Making Websites
I have two sites with the potential to make money because they have ads on them. I also have this one. Here is the breakdown:
- Site One: Small niche site; passion project; earning $5 – $10 a day; not horribly affected by Google changes
- Site Two: Larger site; was making around $100 – $150 for around two years; got crushed in Google update in September 2023; now making around $20 a day
- Site Three: This site; never earned any money; using it for my Daily Journal right now
This journaling is helping me but it’s not productive in the sense of making money at the moment. And it is taking time from working so I need to be typing quicker or making them shorter.
But it’s been really freeing to write on here because I’m not writing to rank. I’m not trying to use the right keywords to attract readers. I’m typing whatever comes to me.
Figuring Out What to Do for Work
Over the last few days, I’ve written about how my moneymaking website (Website Two) got hit with the Google update last September. I’ve been using (wasting?) so much time trying to figure out the issues so that I can make the money I was making before.
It wasn’t great money like it should have been making for long I’ve been at it, but it was certainly respectable. There were expenses but I tried to keep them low. The money was good for mostly part time work (full time in my brain though, unfortunately).
Now, I don’t now if I should keep using money to try to fix it and also use my time, or if it’s time to figure something else out.
It’s Not Just My Site that Was Affected
All over the industry, people are really upset how Google has cast aside small, niche websites in favor of Reddit, Forbes, New York Times, and other huge sites. Google tens to position the big guys over the “expert” niche blog sites that once ranked.
As many people have been saying, “The gravy train is over.”
I’m going to spend time while I’m in the car today really flushing out what my options are. I hope to have some clarity when I write tomorrow.