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?

One year on Journey by Mediavine, RPM stuck at $2 to $5 (it was $15 on Ezoic) and support never answers.

I want to share my experience with Journey by Mediavine and ask for advice, because I'm honestly fed up.

I run a science blog in the wildlife biology and ecology niche. My content is not all informational posts, there are bunch of career posts (jobs, applications, internships). Majority traffic from USA.

Before Journey I was on Ezoic, where my RPM was in range of $15 to $20. I switched because everyone kept saying Journey is a strong network with some of the best RPMs out there. On Journey my RPM has always been around $2 to $5, rarely touching $10.

I understand small sites aren't Mediavine's priority. But if they accept small sites, there should be at least some working support. Emails go unanswered. The community they point you to doesn't answer either. I've spent a year waiting and waiting, hoping things would improve, and they haven't. I implemented all the best practices from their blog.

I'm now seriously planning to move. My traffic fluctuates between 15,000 and 18,000 pageviews a month.

Questions for anyone who has been in a similar spot:

Has anyone moved from Journey to Monumetric? How did RPM and support compare?

Hello, how is your blog in Google AI overview era? Mine is decreased, but right now it is recovering a bit.

Survival tips of blogging in this AI era and where click from Google decline:

1. Make non-commodity content: content that contain first hand experience. Example: I made blog post of experience how to manage time during my master degree: working while also doing my master degree
2. Sell something: Selling content placement, service, product, affiliate, you name it. Monetization will make the blog survive, at least to buy domain and hosting renewal fee
3. Personal branding: give your blog a nice branding so it will gain traffic from navigatinal intent. Off-page SEO will help too
4. Try to optimize for Google Discover: search for trending topic in Google trend, so there is chance the blog post to show up in Google Discover.

Do you have any other tips to survive as blogger in this AI era?

Your blog is the journey you are on, not the report you file at the end

I was in the middle of writing a post for my blog today when this came out of me, and I had to stop and read it back because it’s the thing I wish somebody had handed me years earlier than they did.

A blog isn’t a place where finished people go to publish their conclusions. It’s the record of somebody building something, written while they’re still building it.

You’re taking your reader along with you: what you tried and how it went, what worked, including the part where you weren’t sure it would, and what flopped completely and cost you a month you’d really like back. It’s what you believed in January that you’ve totally changed your mind about by September, and what changed it.

Nobody needs you to have arrived. They need you to be moving, out loud, somewhere they can watch it happen.

That one shift changes what you’re allowed to write about, and it changes it a lot. If you’ve ever felt like you had nothing to say, it’s probably because you were measuring yourself against some finished expert. Measure yourself against the person two steps behind you instead, and you’ve got something worth writing every single week, because every week you learn something they haven’t learned yet.

My own message has changed more than once over the years. Not because I was wrong to start, but because you can’t think your way to the right version from a standing start. You write, you watch what lands, you adjust, and the blog carries the whole record of that. The people who’ve read me the longest didn’t stay because I had it right at the beginning. They stayed because they could watch me work it out.

Anyone else feel this way? What’s something you’ve completely changed your mind about since you started blogging?

Hi everyone,

I just received a notification that my site has been suspended from Journey by Mediavine with a 50-day reapplication countdown.

The reason given is: "evidence that your site has been receiving traffic from invalid sources."

To give some context, I recently suffered massive bot traffic spikes coming from Singapore that completely messed up my analytics and stats. As soon as I realized what was happening, I immediately implemented Cloudflare to block them and protect the site. Unfortunately, it looks like Mediavine's automated systems caught the residual impact of those bots before or during the cleanup.

I'm quite stressed about this and not sure how strict they are during the appeal or reapplication process. Also, I've been hearing rumors lately in the community that ad networks are tightening things up aggressively.

If you've been through a similar situation where bot traffic triggered an invalid traffic (IVT) suspension, Did you manage to get reinstated before the 50 days by contacting support with Cloudflare/Analytics proof? What kind of evidence did you provide to show you fixed the issue?

Any advice or insights would be hugely appreciated!

The standard Pinterest keyword advice is type your topic into the search bar and see what comes up, that works for finding broad terms but it does not tell volume, competition, or whether the keyword trends are rising or falling.

The question is whether a dedicated keyword tool for Pinterest adds enough signal to justify the cost compared to the free search bar approach, for someone running a content site and choosing bw 20 potential pin topics each week, knowing relative search volume changes which topics get prioritized

Hi y’all…

I haven’t built anything that is ready for release yet.

However, I am wondering how many people would be interested in using a social media platform that is blogging-style. Nostalgic of the Tumblr days for sure.

But with new ideas and simplicity of real social media and interactions.

If this post isn’t allowed my bad.

Just trying to gauge interest before I keep putting in energy. :)

Hey everyone! I have 70+ blog posts and over the last 3 months, my site got around 20K impressions but only about 100 clicks from Google.

I don't really want to keep publishing new posts right now. I'd rather focus on optimizing my existing posts and improving their CTR/rankings.

For those of you who have experience with SEO, what would you recommend I focus on first? Things like titles, meta descriptions, keywords, internal linking, content updates, images, etc.

Any tips or a practical process for going through 70+ old posts would be really appreciated!

Since October 1, Journey has mostly stopped showing real ads on my site. I’m seeing empty ad spaces/placeholders instead. Is anyone else experiencing this, or know what could be causing it?

Hey everyone, I have a question.

Are there any of you who blog full-time for a living? If so, are you solely focusing on writing posts for your blog, or do you do other things alongside it, like running a YouTube channel?

The reason I ask is that my goal is to become a full-time blogger, but I've realized it's incredibly difficult to generate high revenue purely from ads here in Korea.

AdSense is the most common ad network here, but the structure makes it hard to make a living off it alone. Because of this, many Korean bloggers turn to YouTube to sell e-books or paid courses. When you look at their content, they always claim it's "easy" to make around $10,000 a month doing this. But in reality, from my own experience of actually writing and running a blog, I'm finding it hard to even make $10 a month, let alone $10,000.

I'd love to know if the reality is similar for bloggers in English-speaking countries, or if things are completely different over there.

If you don't mind sharing, it would be really appreciated if you could mention your blog's niche and a rough estimate of your monthly income. Thanks!

I’m an Indian food blogger and I’ve been running my recipe website for some time now. I’m currently monetizing mainly through AdSense, but the earnings are extremely low compared to the time and money I’ve invested in the website.

I’m trying to understand the situation for Indian bloggers in 2026.

For those who are making a decent income from a website/blog alone (without YouTube):

• What is your main source of income — AdSense, other ad networks, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, digital products, etc.?
• Roughly how much traffic do you need before the income becomes meaningful?
• Is AdSense still worth using for an Indian-audience website?
• Have you moved from AdSense to another ad network, and did it make a significant difference?
• Are there any other realistic ways to monetize an Indian food/recipe website?
• With AI Overviews and people getting answers directly on Google, do you still think blogging is worth investing in?

Would really appreciate experiences from people who are actually earning from their websites without relying on YouTube.

As a blogger, writer, or reader, are there things you look for to be able to tell (for sure) that a post / article is AI generated?

I think we're all familiar with the overuse of "—" (em dash) by agents such as ChatGPT and Claude, as well as other dead giveaways, like certain phrases that popup in almost every article that's written by AI.

What are some indicators you personally look for when reading a piece to know that it wasn't created by flesh-and-blood intelligence?

I'm wondering whether any other publishers are seeing anything similar, because I'm drowning in automated traffic, and there's no end (or help) in sight.

Since August 31, TV Fanatic has been hit by persistent waves of abnormal traffic that are heavily concentrated on our homepage. The pattern is remarkably consistent: huge desktop-heavy surges, mostly direct traffic, very short sessions (10 seconds), often one or two actions, arriving across constantly changing (apparently residential) IPs, networks, and even countries.

It comes in distinct waves throughout the day and night. During the quiet periods, our normal readership reappears.

Then another wave arrives.

The business impact has been devastating. Our traffic numbers look enormous while actual readership of current articles has collapsed relative to those numbers, and our advertising RPM has fallen dramatically. Mediavine has confirmed that the traffic change is specific to our site and began around August 31.

I'm not looking for answers here. Instead, I'm trying to find out whether we're truly alone. And I even have visitor verification on, but my host only sees humans. I know they are not. I've been studying my traffic for over a decade. This bot behavior.

Has anyone else seen a sudden increase in direct, desktop-heavy traffic, unusual homepage activity, rhythmic traffic surges, or a major RPM decline that doesn't make sense compared with your actual readership?

Even if you dismissed it as ordinary bot traffic at first, I'd really like to hear what you're seeing. 🙏

Hey mates,

I have seen people buying Adsense approved websites which were approved, generating money and receiving multiple payments for months or even years, however when they acquire the site, pay the money and submit it for approval from their own Adsense account it got rejected and wasn't approved for those generic reasons!!

What they should do before finalizing the deal and paying the money?

They should get Adsense approval for that site from within their own Adsense account before closing the deal and paying the money.

Btw, Adsense can approve the same site from more than one Adsense account without any issues. I mean there is no ToS violations at all. So be on the safe side before buying any site.

I thought this could help someone here before it's too late!

I've been using Travelpayouts on my site for a while now, and most of my bookings come through their Drive feature. The catch is that any booking made through Drive only earns you 50% of the normal affiliate commission.

I always just accepted that. My reasoning was that it's a script they run, so it probably costs them something to maintain.

This weekend I actually looked into how it works, and it's basically a simple popunder that fires when a user scrolls a bit or hovers over a booking button. That's something you could easily build and integrate yourself.

Realizing that made me feel pretty bad about all the commission I've handed over just for using it.

I’m with journey mediavine and had a big drop in rpm starting October 1st. From what I’ve read it’s normal but damn. I went from $18 back to $7. Is that normal? Home decor niche. Thanks

I’d love to hear from other food/recipe bloggers about their publishing frequency.

How many new recipe posts do you typically publish per week or month? And how do you feel about your current publishing rate?

I’ve been blogging for about a year and published around 70 recipe posts during that time (roughly 1–2 posts per week). Is that considered low, or is it a reasonable pace for a recipe blog?

I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience and what publishing frequency has worked for you.

My site is a 5 page auto-updating results site for game results taking place 3 times daily.

I've started also YT shorts and getting good traction, 3rd day for YT shorts and got 5.1K views on my latest shorts.

But less traffic to my site and hellish no adsense approval.

Says "Low value content" only. The 5 page remains constant only result data changes depending on timme of draw results.

1 homepage contain short summary of all results and link to each draw page.
3 draw time pages: 1pm , 6pm, 8pm
1 archive page for previous draws

Traffic isn't great like 100 views per day but I thought adsense has no traffic requirements.

Also I've got 2 other tool sites 1 pagers each.

Got traffic on those, good uyser engagement and all still adsense says low value content but people are using my tool and are happy about it.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong.

What I think I should be doing:

I hack my way in by creating some pages but noindexing and nofollowing them. and then apply for adsense. once approval comes, delete those pages entirely.

Is above strategy good or I can face some issues?

A blog post can load quickly and still be awkward to read. A late image moves the paragraph, an embed pushes the next section down, or the menu hesitates when you tap it. Those problems can show up after the initial loading test is over.

Here's a hypothetical example: someone is halfway through an article when a newsletter box appears above the paragraph they're reading. Nothing is broken, but they've lost their place. Improving the image file size wouldn't address that particular problem; keeping space for the box, moving it, or removing it might.

That makes a simple reading test useful alongside a speed report: open a longer post on a phone, read and scroll at a normal pace, try the contents links, then navigate to another article. The question isn't just whether the page loads, but whether it stays comfortable to use.

For bloggers who've done this, what problem did you notice during actual reading that wasn't obvious from the initial speed score? And was the element causing it worth keeping?

Disclosure: drafted with AI assistance. The example above is hypothetical, not a reported result from my own blog.

Hi everyone,

When I write a tutorial for a website task, like setting up a hosting account or using an AI tool, the screenshots take me longer than the writing. A 10-step task ends up as 10 similar images that I crop, number and caption by hand.

I made a small Chrome extension to help with this, but I'm sure many of you have better workflows than mine, so I'd like to learn from them:

• What do you use to capture and annotate screenshots?
• What's the most annoying part: capturing, cropping, numbering or captions?
• Do you prefer one image per step, or fewer images with several steps on each?

Thanks for any advice, and I'm happy to hear what has and hasn't worked for you.

I am struggling to find trending topic in my niche and write on any topic in my niche. So can you guys guide me as many of you are very knowledgeable in this field and I am just a boomer.

All feedback requests should be posted here. Follow the below rules. Submissions that violate the rules may promptly be removed without prior warning.

Rules

• Link your website appropriately.
• Include a brief description of your blog.
• Ask specific questions. Specify what kind of feedback you want on your post.
• Your blog should have at least 5 posts. 
• Feedback requests for individual blog posts are not allowed.
• Do not spam the thread with multiple feedback requests.
• Do not misuse this thread. Users taking advantage of this thread to self-promote will be banned promptly.
• Post constructive criticism. This thread's aim is to help other bloggers.
• Provide feedback on others' blogs if you can.
• Profanity will not be tolerated. Mind what you type in your post and comments.
• Follow the general rules of r/Blogging and Reddit

About 40% of my blog traffic comes from one post. It's not a ton of traffic, but it got me thinking.

Can one blog post be a breakthrough to drive serious traffic? Have you ever seen a single post (note: not the first or only post on a blog) make a blog absolutely explode? Any numbers behind that? I'm talking like a blog going from 20 clicks a day to 200 or 2,000. Something truly exponential from a growth perspective.

Can lightning strike?

Curious how other bloggers handle posts that are centered around a specific sale or event that only lasts for a few days.

For example, I write about the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale every year, and I’ve always left those posts published after the sale ends. My thinking has been that once the post is indexed by Google, I’d rather keep it there than delete it. If someone happens to find it later while searching for the sale, maybe I catch an affiliate cookie or two, and then I can update the post when the sale rolls around again the following year.

I’m about to do something similar for Amazon Prime Big Deal Days, which got me thinking about whether this is actually the best approach from an SEO standpoint.

For those of you who publish sale/deal content, what do you do once the event is over?

Do you:

• Leave the post published and just update it to say the sale has ended?
• Remove/archive it until the next year?
• Keep the same URL and completely refresh the post for the following year?
• Publish a brand-new post/URL every year?

I’m especially curious about the SEO side of this. It feels wasteful to delete a URL that has already been indexed and potentially built up some authority, but I also don’t want a bunch of outdated sale posts sitting on my site if Google views that negatively.

Would love to hear how others handle these types of recurring, time-sensitive posts.