A million dollars is a fat chunk of change.

I said no to it.

That was the price tag on my old business: Become a Writer Today.

I started Become a Writer Today as a side project while I was working a corporate job as a copywriter.

My writing site grew slowly at first, earning from ads and affiliates.

But when monthly and then weekly site revenue overtook my salary, I paid more attention to it.

I went hard at it.

In 2020, I quit my corporate job to work on my site full-time.

Over the course of a year or two, the site generated millions of page views. I earned a good chunk of change from display advertising and from affiliate promotions.

Become a Writer Today was pretty big in the writing space for a year or two. I started a podcast, YouTube channel and rolled out online courses

One day, I got a call from a competitor who wanted to collaborate on a joint venture to launch one of their writing courses. The launch went relatively okay, but the entrepreneur in question was far more interested in buying my site.

On a casual, breezy Zoom call, he offered me over $1,000,000 to purchase Become a Writer Today, with a few caveats. I was at first surprised by the amount he was offering, but after a little more research, it seemed on par with what the site was earning from ad revenue and so on each month.

I checked my traffic projections, ad, and affiliate revenue and decided the site certainly had a lot more headroom. If I could use the profits it was generating each month and invest them back into more content, surely I could generate more traffic and more juicy revenue.

A content flywheel, if you will.

I politely declined the founder's request and decided to focus entirely on growing my site as hard as possible.

Because this was the first successful site I’d created, I identified with it. I saw myself as a writer, and writing was my niche. Without the site, I didn’t know what I would do next.

In the first few months after declining the offer, I didn’t pay much attention to it or think much about it.

If anything, saying no felt like vindication.

Traffic grew in line with my projections, and affiliate revenue did too. At one point, I was earning high five figures per month from the site.

I started receiving unsolicited offers from people who wanted to purchase Become a Writer Today.

In fact, things were going so well that I was able to take profits from Become a Writer Today and use them to purchase other content sites.

So I got greedy

I figured that if I had a content publishing model working in one niche, I could apply it to others.

I purchased a few food-and-drinks websites in the coffee niche.

I also started a health and fitness website with the same content as the flywheel I had built. My portfolio of sites grew.

I even started an NFT site and got into trading (a débâcle for another edition!).

And then Google Helpful Content arrived.

I’ll never forget logging into Google Analytics a few days after this big update and seeing the dip.

I said to myself,

The first time I looked at the chart, I thought it was just a blip, or a Google algorithm rolling out, or a fluctuation I shouldn’t worry about too much.

I’d been here before. SEO is a fickle beast. I’d survive.

But my traffic plummeted

Revenue fell even harder.

And it didn’t stop falling.

I tried pruning my site, publishing higher-quality content, hiring an SEO agency, improving the site's editorial quality, and generating social media traffic…

I spent thousands on defunct strategies and ‘turn your dead site around’ online courses.

Nothing worked.

ChatGPT accelerated my decline.

My affiliate revenue went from high multi-five figures a month to less than $1,000 per month.

Ad revenue all but disappeared. So, I let my team of writers and editors go and cut my salary.

What traffic I had left after the Helpful Content Update trickled down the drain.

All I had left was a newsletter and a series of sub-assets, basically the other content sites I had and domain names, which I sold off one by one.

For kicks, I got Become a Writer Today valued again. One buyer offered me 5k.

I said no.

If only for nostalgia's sake.

Today, my site barely covers its hosting bills.

Publishing content at scale, or at least publishing informational content at scale, is a bargain basement commodity.

Should I have taken a million dollars?

In 2022, I couldn’t have predicted the Google Helpful Content Update.

I also missed how AI would disrupt the content publishing model… permanently.

I wasn’t alone.

X, post-HCU, was full of tales of woe from content publishers like me.

Perhaps I made the best decision I could have with the facts in front of me?

Or perhaps I should have gotten out?

I didn’t know it back then, but content sites are even more risky than mid-tier crypto coins and tokens.

I don’t think the buyer would have popped an offer like that in front of me if he’d known what lay ahead.

I tried a few other models after selling off the other sites, including setting up a coaching business, which didn’t really go anywhere. I even got ripped off by an overpriced GURU who overpromised big things (story for another newsletter).

My mental health went down the toilet trying to relight a dead biz.

So, I called it quits on content publishing at scale.

Today?

I started an MBA at Trinity College in Dublin, and I still enjoy writing online, though.

But I’m damned if I rely on an algorithm for my pay.

We’re moving towards a zero-click world

Platform dependence, or platform risk, is real.

Most publishers and brands have seen their traffic drop and drop hard.

Forget about expecting Google to reward you.

If you get social media traffic, it’s a tap they’ll turn off overnight.

Today, AEO and LLM optimisation is all the rage.

So is YouTube and audience acquisition.

Amusingly, list building and newsletters haven’t gone away.

That suits a wordy man like me.

I’m game for some of that.

I’m game, but I’m wary.

I’m wary about any ONE platform or trend delivering the goods.

I set up vendors.i.e., which is a type of business intelligence platform for business owners in Ireland, rather than a content site aimed at getting advertising revenue at scale.

It’s not an SEO play either.

Before I launched this new venture, I spent an hour writing an exit framework.

Basically, I listed out key criteria I’d follow to decide whether to keep working on vendors, i.e., and if and when I would sell this particular business.

I might not need it, but I better to figure out where I’m going before investing time and energy getting there.

An exit framework should remove some of the angst and decision-making I had from Become a Writer Today.

Failure…

Failure is an unforgiving teacher

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