A friend recently said this to me…

“You got out of blogging just in time. Blogs don’t work anymore.”

I responded by first saying I haven’t stopped blogging — or creating content, but yes it is true that I no longer rely on my teaching business as my main source of income.

She explained to me how her friend had a blog that was previously making thousands of dollars per month.

This blog had sunk to almost zero traffic thanks to Google rankings dropping.

This led to the person giving up on their blog business.

I felt sad, but I understood.

Having watched my own blog traffic drop to under 10% of what it was during my peak blogging days, I know the reality we all face.

To put it simply, blogging, and using a blog as a business tool, is not what it used to be!

Would I Use A Blog In 2024?

The most important point to make is that Google as a source of free organic traffic is not reliable.

Creating niche content and slowly building up your ranking in Google is still viable.

Yet I would never start a business using a blog thinking Google SEO will bring in the traffic you need to make sales.

Today you have to think about alternative traffic sources.

BUT, I want to make a key distinction…

A blog is still very much a useful content tool.

Nothing has changed about how you sell with content.

If I was going to start a new coaching, consulting or teaching business today, a blog as my website would absolutely still be central to my strategy.

This, along with an email newsletter would still be the key tools I would use to reach my audience, build trust and sell.

This is what I taught inside my flagship course – Blog Mastermind 2.0 – which is now included as part of the only coaching product I still offer – The Laptop Lifestyle Academy.

However, to initially reach your audience, I wouldn’t look to Google as the main way anymore.

Today I would have to rely on other methods far more.

What other methods you ask?

Growing Your Traffic In 2024

Today if I was starting from scratch I would look far more to collaborative sources of traffic.

By this I mean partnerships, or collabs as the kids say these days!

This could take the form of –

• Social media collabs: Appearing on other people’s social channels or having them recommend my content on their channel.
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• Webinar partnerships: I present a teaching webinar to someone else’s audience.
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• In person events: I present live in person at conferences and meetups arranged by others.
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• Podcast guest appearances: Appearing on someone else’s podcast.
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• Guest/PR articles: Writing content for other publications.
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• YouTube collabs: Appearing or being recommend on other people’s YouTube channels.
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If I had money to spend, I’d use paid media — ads on the big social media and search platforms (Meta, LinkedIn, Google, etc), and possibly tools like Taboola that can help you circulate your content on other sites for a fee.

All of these methods bring you traffic immediately. You either pay for it, or you are tapping into someone else’s existing audience.

In my past I have used all of these methods to grow my audience, but they were secondary to what Google would send me each day from organic search.

Today, I’d have to focus on these other methods more and be certain to capture as many people as I could on to my email newsletter.

The email list remains the most important traffic tool you have (and that you own!), but to fuel its growth, a Google-first strategy doesn’t make sense, especially short term.

What About Organic Social Traffic?

You might be thinking…

What about building your own audience on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube?

Much like Google, these places as organic (free) sources of traffic are not reliable.

Yes you can succeed and build a big audience there, but it’s not quick.

Plus it takes constant work, feeding the social beast every day.

You can’t control it, the algorithm decides who wins and who doesn’t.

It’s a viable strategy, but not an instant one — and a heck of a lot of work!

I believe a collab is a better starting point because you get instant audience feedback and rapid growth.

You step in front of someone else’s existing audience, rather than attempting to build your own.

I can share a story to illustrate the difference…

Two Years Of Work = Two Weeks Of Work

When I first started as a content creator I spent 24 months writing blog posts.

Six months into this journey I started an email newsletter and a podcast.

Most of the time I spent writing.

I did also do some work on SEO, generating links from other blogs and websites.

The end result of this work was 5,000 email subscribers.

It was slow.

If you calculated my per-hour earnings during this time it was probably like $1 an hour!

After two years I decided to launch my first product, my first course.

As part of this launch campaign I asked about 20 other bloggers and email newsletter owners to promote my campaign.

Many of them did so, giving a report I’d written to their audience.

In order to get this report, a person had to enter their email and join my newsletter.

In a two week window of time I had 10,000 new email subscribers sign up.

That is TWICE as many subscribers in two weeks as I accumulated by myself with my own content in TWO YEARS!

Why? Because I gained instant exposure to much larger audiences.

These audiences were told to go join my newsletter to get something.

That is powerful for growth.

That is why collabs work so well even today.

The only difference now is you have so many more platforms to do a collab on.

Should We Give Up On Blogs?

As I write this newsletter my current company InboxDone just had a new customer sign up.

They noted Google Search was how they found us.

On the sales call my team member learned that they searched for ‘accountant email virtual assistant’.

On our company blog we have an article specifically targeting these keywords.

That’s a super niche phrase.

We of course rank number one for it organically, but under a whole lot of paid ads.

Our company was the perfect fit for this person and thanks to Google, it cost us nothing but the fee we paid to a writer to create the article for our blog.

This is the strategy I built my entire teaching business on.

Write articles, rank for niche keywords in Google and bring people to my blog and newsletter.

As you can see, it still works.

BUT, if this was the only source of subscribers or customers we can rely on, we’d be in trouble.

It’s simply too hard to rank in Google today, plus the organic search results are buried under so many paid ads.

You can rank for long tail niche phrases like this example I just shared.

But you won’t likely get enough traffic.

Google is stills one traffic option, but one I no longer rely on as the top source.

The Fundamentals Have Not Changed

A blog is just a website. That has not changed.

It can still rank in Google.

You can and should present your brand there.

Your sales pages are there to sell your products and services.

Your optin forms to grow your newsletter are there.

The pages to deliver your podcast and videos are there.

Of course other platforms can do these things too.

Some work great in tandem – for example most serious YouTubers will eventually have a website.

Same goes for podcasters.

All of this is just part of the same strategy we’ve all been using now for decades.

It’s called Content Marketing.

The fundamentals of how this all works are the same.

Reach people with your content, build trust and sell something.

Not everyone uses the same media or platforms, but they all use the same strategy.

We’ve been doing this since we invented the printing press and the radio.

We use words and imagery to connect, build audiences, and make money.

Every online business in some way is a content business.

This is why I am so glad I spent much of my twenties learning how to use content to sell.

Pretty much everything I learned was eventually turned into some kind of training program.

All of these are now inside The Laptop Lifestyle Academy.

If you want to succeed online, you will have to succeed with content.

There is no avoiding it.

Now I’m heading back to creating more content to grow my business.

You should do the same.

Talk soon,

Yaro