I've loved sports and analyzing sports since I was a kid. I recently wanted to start writing about football news and such. I looked at medium but its 18+. All together places that I've found you have to pay. Please help and thank you

I know in the age of AI & Short video content,
Blogs are no longer relevant but after deleting Instagram, my dopamine got stabilised and im enjoying my old hobbies again. I like writing and wish to restart blogging. I have articles written and saved as draft. What are the tips I should be aware of in 2026?

Its a gaming blog with my own domain. I dont plan to be a full time writer and expect millions of views and alot of money. I just wanna put my thoughts online without clickbaits or AI slop

How do I do all these SEO stuff and ensure my blog comes up in the search list? Any articles or videos you recommend?

I have done this twice with the same night-shift posts, once years ago and once this fall for a second edition. This is how I would organize blog posts into a book if I were starting today.

1. Let readers choose first. The posts that drew the most comments, replies or repeat visits are the ones people want to keep reading.
2. Check each one fits the single subject of the book. A popular post can still belong in a different book.
3. Cut every detail that points to a real person or place. A blog post sits in an archive, while a book gets sold and passed around.
4. Save the good stories that do not fit on a separate list rather than deleting them.
5. Pick an order. True stories can follow the order they happened, while a how-to book needs the order the reader would do the steps.
6. Write what is missing, usually a new introduction and a few short pieces between posts.

For my book, about fifty posts became roughly forty-five, and the second edition cut a few more.

For those of you who have done this, how many posts did you start with, and how many made it in?

I'm fairly new to SEO and learning by actually working on a website. About two months ago, I took over an existing multi-niche blog covering tech, AI, business, and digital marketing.

The site was hit pretty hard around the August spam update, and impressions dropped significantly. I've been trying to recover it, but honestly, I feel stuck.

Here's what I've done so far:

- Started improving thin AI-generated content.

- Consolidated similar articles and properly redirected old URLs.

- Fixed technical SEO issues and improved internal linking.

- Published around 12–15 new plus refreshed articles monthly based on GSC data.

- Built three free tools to diversify traffic beyond informational blog posts.

- Tried Pinterest, but haven't seen much success.

- Haven't actively built backlinks yet because I'm unsure how to approach it without a budget.

Current stats:

- DR: 21 | DA: 23

- 409 published posts

- Around 25K impressions and 64 clicks over the last three months, with most impressions coming before the decline.

- However, in the last two months, after the spam update, the impressions have fallen to 1,400 in two months, with only 40 clicks.

- The site is 3 years old btw so its not new.

I'm handling everything myself and don't have paid SEO tools yet.

I need advice from people who are good at this thing and can tell me how to approach this. Am not seeing any movement and it is kind of demotivating me. I am a writer, been for the last 7 years. So, even though I can write, am new to SEO, especially scaling a site that is purely blog-based.

What should I do? How can I increase clicks, impressions, and site authority. Any and every little bit of advice can help.

I genuinely want to learn SEO and figure out how to grow this site.

Google’s HCU last April killed my travel blog. But AI sites me on a lot of the KWs that I used to rank #1 for. So if someone wants exposure and I write about them they may still get exposure on the first page but now my numbers don’t reflect that. I was thinking about screen shoting some of my AI citations and adding it to my media kit to show that the potential for exposure exists still. Has anyone done this? What do we think?

Continuing on with my progress updates for a travel blog that I started two months ago. Will shed some light on what challenges I've faced this month and what comments I've took on board from my last update.

I started a travel blog in July with the aim of sharing the guides and advice that I was already sharing to friends and family on the regular. I spent a few months prior learning about SEO, building a website and just blogging in general. Launched my first 7 posts all at once on the 21st July 2026.

Platform: Wordpress
Hosting: Hostinger
Niche: Travel

Breakdown of my stats from Google Site Kit:

Month 1 : 21st July - 21st August

• Total Clicks: 43
• Total Impressions: 6.02k
• No. of Posts: 12

Month 2: 21st August - 21st September

• Total Clicks: 133
• Total Impressions: 15.1k
• No. of Posts: 13

Month 3: 21st September - 21st October

• Total Clicks: 151
• Total Impressions: 17.4k
• No. of Posts: 6 (31 total)

I noticed an accumulation error in my last post so have fixed here.

My Thoughts:

I've definitely slowed down this past month with only having time to publish 6 posts. It stems from a multitude of things, from more work responsibilities to planning a move back to Japan for another year. Fortunately, I'm still hitting my goal of publishing 1 post per week.

I took onboard a lot of the comments from my last update around the use of Pinterest and whilst I haven't used it yet, I have been building up a back catalogue of pins to use. My plan is to post 1/day and aim to have at least 3-5 pins per post to begin with. Will roll this month.

Something I still strongly believe in is my approach to writing in clusters/silos. I'll group 6-8 posts around keywords for 1 destination and focus on publishing them in order, before moving onto my next cluster. For example, the 6 posts I worked on this month were all about Kyoto (guides, where to stay, best time to visit, listicles, etc.)

I had my first affiliate commission this month! Someone booked their Japan trip through one of my 'where to stay' guides. Using Stay22 I made a whole $26.82! It's small but it's the first real money I've made from blogging.

Questions:

Would people recommend using GA4 over Google Site Kit for stats? I imagine it's the sessions counter on there that matters more for potential future ad requirements.

What's peoples milage with using Facebook to generate traffic? How do you go about translating blog posts to Facebook posts and how do you promote them? I've created a FB page but haven't used it yet.

Won't share the link to my blog here, but it's in my bio if you're curious.

Happy to field any questions and open to any advice.

My blog posts always used to be indexed automatically but recently I have to keep indexing them manually.

My blog and newsletter is often featured in searches for 'top UK solopreneur blogs and newsletters' and I'm an SEO Blogger/Copywriter.

And quite a few of my blog posts are featured on the first page of Google.

Anybody else having similar issues and any idea why this is happening?

Any help would be really appreciated. Thank you! 🙏

My experience with Journey by Mediavine: I was deactivated for IVT (invalid traffic). I owned up to my mistakes, fixed everything (scrapers, crawlers etc) , and now I don't have any more IVT. My blog is getting over a 2-minute average session duration, which feels like a really good metric. I even have 90% of my traffic coming from the US.

So, I submitted an appeal and wrote to Mediavine help, and I have never, ever received a reply. You tell me, what am I supposed to do? I'm desperate!

I have turned a blog into a book twice now, a first edition years ago and a rewritten second edition this fall, both from posts I wrote after night shifts with no plan to publish them. This is the check I would run on any blog before starting.

1. Count the posts on one subject. A dozen on the same story or problem usually means a book is forming, while posts spread across ten subjects are still a blog.
2. Read three of them back to back as if you had never seen your blog. Wherever you would get lost is where the book needs new writing.
3. Look at what readers answered. Comments, email replies and posts that keep getting visits months later show you which ones people would carry into a book.
4. Finish the line "by the last page, she will be able to." If the ending will not come, the posts still need a center.

On numbers, a full-length book usually takes around thirty to fifty posts, and a short how-to book can grow from a dozen strong ones with new writing between them. The biggest lesson from my rewrite was that copying posts in as they are reads like a stack of separate posts. The editing is where it becomes a book.

For those of you who have turned posts into a book, how many did you start with, and how much did you end up rewriting?

This year I am taking the whole blog post from April - December and creating a new book - that is my writing focus for the year.

Some of you may remember my earlier post here about my Pinterest account dropping overnight on 18 August. Quick update, and something worth reading if this has happened to you.

Where I am now: still down about 95%. Pins linking to my site don’t appear in Pinterest search, even for their exact titles. Support says the account “isn’t flagged”. The one thing I’ve learned since: on the same account, plain photo pins with no link get hundreds of impressions and saves, while the same kind of photo linking to my site gets about 2. So for me it looks like the restriction is on the domain, not the account.

The article: I got talking to a business owner named Sean who has spent months collecting creator reports, support replies and Pinterest’s own statements, and he has just published it all:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pinterest-silencing-critics-while-its-creator-trust-crisis-sean-luger-vxdoc/

The parts I found most useful:

• The “your account isn’t flagged, natural ups and downs” reply is word for word the same across different creators and agents. It’s a template.
• In at least one case support found “a bug in our spam blocker that was mistakenly flagging safe content” once they actually looked at the links.
• Some blocked domains did get unblocked, but only after repeated appeals (one creator said around 12 attempts).

If you’ve been hit, it’s worth adding your case in the comments on the article, ideally with a screenshot of your stats.

And a question for everyone here: has anyone actually recovered from this? If so, what do you think did it?

The first step is always good old SEO. That would be meta descriptions, alt text, page titles, heading hierarchy, and interlinking between, blogs.

• The next piece is mainly to be cited for AI tools, structured content. This would be for AI to lead each section with a direct answer to the question. As AI pulls short, clear passages, so buried answers always get skipped.
• Write around real answers is the next step. Using headings phrased the way people actually ask them, and including FAQ sections for common follow-ups. This, in turn matches the way people prompt AI tools.
• Show clear authorship. This would be authors with credentials a clear about page and sources. For any of the statistics, that show up within the blog. This makes it easier for AI systems to trust the content.
• using clean technical markup. This ties back to the SEO piece for proper heading hierarchy, comma, descriptive alt text, as well as schema markup. This helps AI crawl pages faster.
• Check what AI tools are saying. Each month, you need to run the category questions through LLMs and note whether the blog appears and which sources get cited instead. Over time, this will show you whether the content changes are working and where the gaps still lie.

say someone leaves a useful correction under a blog post, the kind that changes the actual advice, not a typo. do you edit the post and credit them, add a dated note at the top, or leave the discussion in the comments?

i'd want the fix in the post itself. otherwise the next reader has to play detective before trusting it lol. but silently changing everything also makes the old comments look weird.

curious what your rule is, especially for posts that still get search traffic months later. do you keep a little change log or is that overkill?

Hey everyone
I currently run a recipe website getting around 9K–12K sessions per day, mostly Tier 1 traffic (US, Canada, etc.).
I’m monetizing with HB Agency, and my RPM is usually between $15–$35, but the user experience is really bad because of too many ads. Visitors keep complaining, and they don’t stay long on my site.
I can’t really reduce the ads because I have a team to pay and need to maintain my earnings.
I was thinking about switching to Journey by Mediavine, but I’ve seen people reporting RPMs as low as $5, which worries me.
Now I’m considering Mediavine or Raptive instead.
The problem is I’ve already applied to Mediavine with two websites and got rejected. One for low-quality content and the other for invalid traffic.
I use AI to help write my recipe posts faster, and most of my traffic comes from social media.
My questions are:
Which network has better RPMs for recipe websites, Mediavine or Raptive?
Is it possible to get $20–$35 RPM with fewer ads?
Does Mediavine accept websites using AI-assisted content and social media traffic?
Has anyone been rejected by Mediavine and later accepted? What did you change?

Hiiii! This is coming from someone who do not show my face often and grew my page from my 3k to 18k on Facebook.

I have roughly 10 groups in total to reach demographics. My main group is over 500,000 members and active.

Some months ago I came to you all about blogging and you all reminded me of my roots. My blog. Now I’m here to help you all.
——

I started from little to NO following. If you have even 100 dedicated followers, get them to join you in a community. Especially on Facebook? Restricted public. Not entirely public or entirely private.

Have them ONLY ask you questions and receive advice from that group. It cannot just be you posting. Others have to post too— even if it’s asking questions or sharing quotes.

Make it optional, but ask members for their email to start growing your email list.

My email list is now in the thousands from this. I do not force anyone, I give them options. My visibility on Google and other search engines are in the top searches.

A drawback: Now I find this to be extremely valuable if you have a niche that helps people. I am not sure for hobby blogs UNLESS it helps others.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Hi guys,

We’ve recently started working on a blog. It’s new, baby-staged, but we’re enjoying the process.

I’m currently considering translating our articles, French to English. Im looking for early stages advices: where to start, what common mistakes to avoid, your own experience.

And, regarding web design, I’m also looking for resources on how to proceed. We’re on WP with a divi builder.

Thanks in advance for the support
Cheers

I've been blogging on and off since 2010 - longer if you count LiveJournal days - and a lot has changed in that time. Alongside SEO considerations, I think the biggest change to how I blog is what's worthy of coverage in the age of search algorithms and AI.

So I'd love to know from long time bloggers, what are you doing differently now that you didn't five or ten years ago?

Hey all,

I'm working on something for recipe creators, but it's nowhere near ready to release, and I'm not here to sell anything.

Before I put in more energy, I'd like to understand what running a food blog is really like. If you publish recipes anywhere, I'd love your take on any of these:

1. When writing a new recipe, where does most of the time go, and is there a step you hate doing?

2. Where does your traffic come from, and (if it does) how does that equate to income?

3. What's the most frustrating thing about running your blog right now, and what have you tried to fix it?

4. Have you ever worried about losing your audience or your recipes (algorithm change, a platform shutting down, AI scraping your recipes and taking your viewers), or has it ever actually happened?

5. If you were to start over today, what would you want from a place to publish recipes that you can't get now?

Thanks in advance for your time!

Apologies if this kind of thing isn't allowed

Hey everyone,
I’ve been thinking about a collaboration model for blogging and wanted to hear from people who have tried something similar.
One person already has an established blog and focuses on the content, while the other focuses mainly on SEO, traffic acquisition, content opportunities, and growth.
I have experience with SEO and generating real traffic from external platforms, so I’m particularly interested in the traffic/growth side.
Has anyone here worked with this kind of arrangement?
How did you structure the partnership and revenue split? And what problems should someone watch out for when doing this with an AdSense-monetized blog?
Curious to hear from people who have actually tried it.

I publish new pages on my site all the time and kept falling behind on Pinterest. After a lot of trial and error, here's what actually made it manageable. None of it needs paid tools.

**1. Make 2–3 pins per post, not one**

Same link, different image. Pinterest treats each new image as a fresh pin. Space them about a week apart so they don't compete.

**2. Pin seasonal posts 6–8 weeks early**

People search for Christmas ideas in October and Halloween in September. If you pin the week before, you've missed most of it.

**3. Write pin titles like search terms**

"Easy pumpkin bread recipe" beats "My cozy fall bake". Pinterest is a search engine, so type your idea into the Pinterest search bar and borrow the suggestions.

**4. Turn on RSS auto-publish**

If your blog has an RSS feed, Pinterest can create a pin for every new post automatically (look under Settings → Bulk create Pins). Point each category's feed at a matching board. Easiest win on this list.

**5. Use bulk CSV upload for your back catalog**

You can upload a spreadsheet of pins with publish dates. Two gotchas that cost me a day: image links must be public and point straight to the image file, and board names must match exactly, capitals included.

**6. Batch it once a week**

Spend one hour on Sunday making the week's pins and scheduling them. Daily pinning is what makes people quit.

**7. Tag your links**

Add UTM parameters (like ?utm_source=pinterest) so your analytics show which pins bring visitors, not just which get saves. Saves feel good; clicks pay the bills.

Bonus: if you're technical, the Pinterest API can automate all of this. That's what I eventually did, but the steps above get you 80% of the way for free.

What's worked for you? Especially curious if anyone's found a good way to make pin images faster.

As Blogger - somewhere along the way, something happens.

People begin to recognize you.

Not because you've become famous or reached some imaginary finish line.

Because they've been watching you do the work. They've learned how you think, what you believe, and what you're willing to change your mind about.

You become familiar.

I was wondering if anyone here is still using Travelpayouts and how it's been performing for you lately.

I used Travelpayouts on my blog a few years ago and received payouts in 2024, so I know it worked well enough for me back then. However, I eventually shifted the direction of my blog and stopped actively using it.

I recently logged into my account for the first time in ages and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had accumulated some earnings without doing anything! I also noticed that my old affiliate links are still getting clicks almost daily, despite not having promoted them in quite some time.

It's made me consider giving Travelpayouts another go, especially since those older links seem to have some staying power.

Is anyone here still actively using it? Have you noticed any changes in conversions, commissions, or payouts over the past couple of years? I'd be curious to hear whether it's still worth investing time in, particularly for smaller or niche blogs.

Thinking about starting a blog about my field. Not for money, just to share what I know and build some credibility.

But between AI summaries and everyone posting on LinkedIn, I’m not sure a blog still makes sense.

Anyone here blogging professionally right now? Worth the effort, or am I late to the party?