on giving up the business of blogging

I quit.

I quit that side of blogging. The side of blogging that has anything to do with ads and/or brands.

When I wrote my very first blog post eight-and-a-half years ago, I knew nothing of things like audience, brand, following, SEO (search engine optimization), ads, reach, traffic, or conferences. (To be fair, there weren’t blog conference yet, but still.) I want to go back there. I want to go back to when I had only one reader and that was completely enough for me. Not that I don’t like blog readers (I do!), but I want to go back to how I wrote back then. I want to write for writing’s sake. I want it to be fun. I don’t want to create a “media kit”; I don’t even want to learn what a media kit is.

For the last six months or so, I have not enjoyed blogging as much as I used to. I was hoping that attending a blog conference would help me find joy in it again, but, if anything, it made me sink deeper into the pit of why do I even bother. I want to like it again. So, something has to change. I’m hoping a brand new site and a fresh start are the change I need. Because I’m not ready to give up quite yet.

I have two jobs; they pay the bills and they give me the exact same amount of income every month. I like dependable, consistent income. I make barely any money blogging, and I just don’t want to do it anymore. I mean, the main purpose of the ads on my old site was to cover the cost of the site, but all hobbies have a cost, right? The cost of self-hosted blogging is not that high, I’m pretty sure I can handle it without ads.

Also, I want this blog to be mine. I don’t want to have to watch what I say about different brands or which brands I mention in the first place. And I don’t want big flashy advertisements I can’t control in places I don’t like to have them.

All this being said, I’d still love to have a paid writing gig. I just do not want to do product reviews or sponsored posts or ads. And that being said, I’m opening up a chunk of my sidebar to friends who have online businesses. Because I like supporting friends who depend on blogging/the Internet for their income. So if you know me, as in, if we have some sort of relationship that involves the exchange of (friendly) words on a regular basis, and you have an online business that you’d like to promote, let me know and I’ll consider putting your button in that area.

So, what I’m really trying to say is welcome. I love fresh starts, and a new year seemed the perfect time to launch a new blog. If you subscribed to my old blog via RSS, nothing will change. I’ll be blowing up my Facebook account before the end of the day, which basically means nothing, and I’ll most likely be back. We’re just on a break. So if you think I deleted you, I didn’t. I deleted me. (Although I did make a page for the blog, so if you like getting blog updates through Facebook, you can still do that. Click here and hit “Like”.) I also deleted my Instagram account, because Instagram and Facebook are getting just a little too close for comfort. I created another one so I can still follow people, but I won’t be posting photos there. If you follow me on Twitter, my handle has changed to @jenwilsonca, for the purposes of having all the Internet things the same.

Happy New Year, people of the Internet.

And Happy Birthday, Dad!