I’m done with blogging.

After several years of trying to work with the system and be part of it, I’m done. I’ve had about 5 or 6 websites in the last 8 years. None of them prospered. Not because I didn’t work hard at it. But because I lost interest after a few entries.

I decided to stop catering to the algorithm, which restrained my creativity to a niche I care very little about.

When blogging started, it was simple. You had something to say, so you said it. You wrote about your day, your interests, your weird observations about the world. Maybe twelve people read it. Maybe a hundred. It didn’t matter.

The point wasn’t the audience—it was the act of sharing.

Now? Open any “how to start a blog” guide and you’ll be buried under an avalanche of advice about niches, keywords, SEO optimization, content calendars, monetization strategies, and “pillar posts.”

Blogging has become a production.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I couldn’t keep up. No. I realized I didn’t want to. What I wanted was the old days back.

A Brief History of How We Got Here

In the late ’90s, early 2000s, blogs were essentially online diaries. Justin Hall, widely considered one of the first bloggers, began writing about his life in 1994, while a college student. He wasn’t trying to rank on Google (which barely existed). He was just… sharing.

Platforms like LiveJournal, Open Diary, and Blogger emerged in 1998-99, making it dead simple for anyone to start. No coding required. Just write and hit publish. Communities formed organically. Bloggers linked to each other, commented on each other’s posts, and built relationships through words.

There were blogrolls—curated lists of other blogs you liked—that served as recommendations. There were trackbacks that let you know when someone referenced your post. The whole system was designed around discovery and connection.

But nothing good lasts forever. With companies like Google trying to monetize everything, blogging has evolved into the monster it is today.

The Great Professionalization

At some point—maybe around 2010, maybe earlier—a shift happened. People realized you could make money from blogs. Not “hey, I got a free book to review” money. Real money. Six-figure money.

But there was a catch. To make that money, you needed traffic. To get traffic, you needed to rank on Google. To rank on Google, you needed to understand the algorithm. And the algorithm wanted very specific things:

  • Long-form content (the average successful post crept from 500 words to 1,000 to 1,500 to 2,000+)
  • Keyword optimization
  • Backlinks from other sites
  • Regular publishing schedules
  • Niche focus

That last one is the killer. The advice became universal: pick a niche and stick to it. Become the “barbecue blog,” or the “minimalist parenting blog,” or the “budget travel for couples blog.”

Own your corner of the internet and go deep.

The numbers make it clear why this happened. According to Ahrefs, 96.55% of all web pages get zero organic search traffic from Google.

Zero.

Only 5.7% of pages will rank in the top 10 search results within a year of publication. The competition became brutal, and the only way to compete was to specialize and optimize.

The most profitable blog niche today?

Finance.

But here’s what that takes: the average blog post, with 1000-1500 words, requires about 3.5 hours to write. That’s with no cheating or using AI.

Bloggers who report “strong results” are typically spending 6+ hours per post. Businesses spending $4,000 or more per article are 2.6 times more likely to call their strategy “very successful.”

This isn’t writing anymore. It’s content production.

The Problem With Niches (When You’re Not a Niche Person)

I tried to play the game.

I did the research. Lots of research on a specific subject.

I understood that if I wanted readers—real readers, not just my wife and three friends—I needed to find my lane and stay in it.

But here’s my problem: I’m not a lane person.

I’m interested in too many things.

I love sports. But I’m not Stephen A. Smith with a staff of researchers cranking out content every single day about the subject.

I also love grilling. But I’m not going to write 200 posts about smoker temperatures. And I can go on and on about it.

The niche model assumes you can pick one thing and be endlessly passionate about it. That works for some people. It doesn’t work for me. I’m a generalist in a specialist’s world.

And even if I could force myself into a box, I’d be competing against people who’ve been in that box for a decade. People with teams. People with budgets. People who treat their blog like a full-time business because it is their full-time business.

I have a job. I have a family. I have maybe a few hours a week to write. How am I supposed to compete with that?

The answer, I eventually realized, is that I’m not.

What We Lost

When blogging became a business, we lost something important.

We lost the personal voice. The rambling, imperfect, “here’s what I’m thinking about today” quality that made early blogs feel like letters from a friend.

Now everything is optimized. Headlines are A/B tested. Posts are structured for “skimmability” because 73% of people admit to skimming rather than reading. Every paragraph exists to serve the algorithm.

Here is another thing. You can’t visit a blog just to enjoy its content. You have to fight the pop-ups and GIF banners, and wait a certain amount of time before closing them. I hate visiting these kinds of websites.

We lost community. The blogroll is basically dead. Who links to other blogs anymore? The economics don’t support it—every outbound link is a potential reader you’re sending away. Better to keep them on your site, clicking your ads.

We lost experimentation. When every post needs to perform, you stop taking risks. You write what you know will work, what’s been proven to work, what matches the formula. The weird, personal, unpredictable stuff gets edited out.

As one writer at The Verge put it: “In the beginning, there were blogs, and they were the original social web. We built a community. We found our people. We wrote personally. We wrote frequently.”

I want to go back to the old days. To the days where I can read a blog peacefully.

The Case for Writing Anyway

Here’s what I’ve come to accept: I’m never going to be a professional blogger.

I don’t have the desire to chase hits. I don’t want to spend my limited writing time researching keywords. I refuse to reduce my interests to a marketable niche.

And that’s fine.

Because there’s another model. The old model. Write about what interests you. Share it. Don’t worry about the algorithm. Let the audience find you—or don’t. Either way, you’ve created something.

This approach won’t make me money. It probably won’t make me famous. But it will make me satisfied. And it might connect me with the handful of people who actually care about the same random stuff I do.

Actually, there’s a growing movement of people returning to personal blogging. They are rejecting the content-industrial complex in favor of something smaller and more human. They’re carving out their own corners of the internet, writing for themselves first and algorithms never.

As that Verge writer said: “Buy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be fancy.”

Where I’ve Landed

This blog exists because I like to write. That’s it. That’s the whole reason.

Some posts will be about local Augusta stuff. Some, I’m chatting with people in the area. Some will be about grilling or the outdoors. Some will be about whatever rabbit hole I fell into that week. There’s no content strategy. There’s no keyword research. There’s just me, trying to say something worth reading.

If that means I never crack the Google top 10, so be it. If my audience stays small, that’s okay too. The early bloggers had small audiences. They wrote anyway. They built something real, even if it was never going to scale.

I’d rather write what I want for a few hundred people than write what the algorithm wants for nobody.

The personal blog isn’t dead. It just stopped being profitable. And honestly? That might be what saves it.