5 reasons I’ve kept up my blog for the past 19 years
This post is sponsored by WordPress.com
About a decade ago, I started to see a very interesting shift in the online world – more and more people were walking away from their blogs and website and moving entirely to social media platforms.
And I get why that was a popular choice! Sponsorship dollars moved quickly to social media and the engagement on social media was quick and relatively easy to get.
But I didn’t do the same. Instead, I doubled down on my blog, moved it to WordPress, and continued to grow it at the same time that I focused on growing my social media presence.
And now, a decade later, I’m so glad I made that choice and I’m hearing more and more often from other creators that they wish they’d kept up their own sites or that now they’re going back and building a blog.
Here are five reasons I’m so happy I never walked away from my blog
- I own my blog (and I don’t own my social media platforms). It’s a risky choice to build your entire business on a platform you don’t own and have no control over. I’ve seen way too many of my creator friends have their social media accounts shut down with little or no recourse for getting it reinstated. I love that I own this little piece of the internet and that I’m not worrying about it getting shut down with no warning.
- Blog content lives forever and is so easy to refer back to. It’s HARD to find old posts on social media platforms and usually they have a shelf-life of just a few weeks (and often just a few hours!). My blog posts, on the other hand, are easily accessible and easy for me to share year after year. I have blog posts that have been popular for more than a decade and continue to serve the Everyday Reading community long after I posted them. From travel guides to reading charts to book lists, all of that content is easily accessible at any moment.
- No algorithm! On social media platforms, the algorithm reigns supreme and determines who sees your content. I love that my blog isn’t controlled by an algorithm but instead by me!
- I can make money on my content. On Instagram, I have to make brand deals or use affiliate links to make money, but with a website, it’s pretty straight-forward to add sidebar ads so that you earn money with every page view without having to find brands to pay you for any piece of content you want to earn money on. My ad revenue from my blog is the easiest money I make!
- You can update or edit old content at any time. If you post a video on social media with a typo in your overlay or you suddenly realize there was a pair of underwear in the background? Too bad! Your options are delete or live with it. My blog posts, on the other hand, can be edited at any moment. I can add new books to an old book list to keep it up to date or I can fix typos or add new photos whenever I want. I love the flexibility of my blog!
I’ve been using WordPress to run Everyday Reading for more than a decade and it’s been the best choice – easy to use and affordable!
As the online world has shifted (and shifted again and again), WordPress has continued to grow with me, providing a safe and stable place to build and grow my little corner of the internet. I still post on Everyday Reading 6 days a week sharing everything from my weekly menu to book deals to my annual Summer Reading Guide and reading charts.
If you’ve been considering starting a blog or resurrecting an old site, I highly highly recommend WordPress.com! It’s perfect if you’re just starting out and it can continue to grow with and support your business as it scales.
And if you have any questions about blogging, I’m more than happy to answer – it is one of my favorite topics!
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
