Thoughts on Quitting Blogging

WordPress.Com is changing might be come a social blogging platform. Similar to Medium. Blogs are changing.

Latest Podcast I mention about it

Changes to WordPress.com

WordPress.COM (not WordPress.ORG) is changing. recently removed the premium themes. If you want to use your own custom them you will need to upgrade to a higher plan (Business)

There is also the introduction of paid ads here on the free tier. To remove it you need to upgrade.

https://wordpress.com/support/native-sponsored-posts/

I am not suprised by this move as WordPress.com has got to make money upfornt and also compete with newcomer software such as Ghost. Which I am more keen to lean into someday.

The only advantage WordPress.com has over others blogging platforms is you can take your content out and host it elsewhere. I am ok if the monetise the site with ads cause I don’t get much traffic these days. I feel they are trying to appeal to creators to make content or build their Linktree Page here.

Which Brings me to the question Should I quit Blogging?

Quitting Blogging?

Quitting blogging? And Going back to Social. I came across TechLead video about social media and blogging. Generally he feels that BLogs are old Tech.

A Satire view on Social Media ahaha but he gives a balanced view if you want a business go and do social but not be social on it.

I would disagree that Blog’s can’t do well, because its established in certain niches, such as Real Estate or Tech but some of the other niches Blogs such as anime or games unless you are a news site, may not be suited.

Sometimes blogs and text may not be suited trying to explain things or do something entertaining an image or video might be better.

That bring it back to social media or what I call now video social.

I do think social media should not be described as “Social” or having to connect with friends and family mantra. Maybe only Facebook. The newer ones like Instagram, TikTok are all advertising and entertainment platforms with video and images focused.

While I have wrote my thoughts about quitting social media I am now thinking of slowing down my posting in blogging and not posting here frequently, I managed to do it a couple of times for a full month.

But looking around I see the death of the personal blog not Blogs in general. I feel right now video both short and media yea like the TikTok, Insta Reels and YouTube Shorts are the now trending mediums. It’s hard to host video on your own.

A few options are to go Visual

Images

Video

Audio

Change in Strategy

I don’t mind paying for hosting as I don’t want to deal with the technical parts of web administration. But I would like some personal customisation to showcase my personal thoughts and other works.

I sometimes wonder if building a blog site to collect emails would be still valid? Yes it’s a hedge against the changing algorithms of Social but it may not be a valid strategy beyond those couple of niches of Productivity, Tech or Real Estate & Finance.

I am actually looking at Ghost and Gatsby as Static Sites might be better in the Longer Term as its not complex to host. I might dump my final writings to a Git Hub Page.

WordPress.com is still a nice in between hosting and owning your content. But I will only do it once I get more traffics or interest, I also feel that they might not have my interest… …

I am looking at building a JAM Stack blog with Gatsby and Ghost (Cause I need a UI for writing sometimes) but also to pull in content from YouTube or other social media sites and WordPress gets costly with these automations.

At the end of the day all blogs and social media distribution channels for various media forms.

My main issue is distribution and attention. So I am planning to dive into Social Media again for a while not as a user but as a distribution channel.

I probably will switch gears making videos and audio podcast and embed it in a website or build a landing page custom LinkTree with more interactive features.