Doing Own Website

1. 94

   ControlledChaos1posted 10 months ago

   Was curious to see if anyone has tried the "writing on your own website" route and if they've had any success from it. I know Google doesn't particularly like "content farms", but trying to get own site noticed seems so daunting.

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   1. 98

      CYong74posted 10 months agoin reply to this

      I started my own sites before writing on HP and I’m not ashamed to admit it, I was originally here for shameless backlinks. But I soon discovered there’s money to be made here, at least back then, and so I devoted real effort to what I do here.
      
      The problem with managing your own site is that it takes time to grow, and if you want to grow big, you have to invest. You can use a free service and all that but if you really want to be a recognized authority, if you want big players to be comfortable working with you, you need to invest in your own domain, host, and all the auxiliary services that come with those be it technical or advertisements.
      
      The game changes, too, down the road. It becomes far more than a matter of casting the best net and hoping Google loves you. Some of the brands I’ve worked with don’t even give a damn about SEO. Ultimately, it’s a long road and there are many decisions to be made. Hate to say it but it becomes business-like, and with that, tedious.
      
      By the way, this is why I still appreciate what HubPages provides, for all its current issues. Here, you have the benefit of a recognized domain and if you put in the effort to publish good content, you will earn something. Not the case for your own sites, at least not till you’ve thrown in a lot of work, most of which isn’t writing.

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   2. 93

      Kenna McHughposted 10 months agoin reply to this

      CYong sums it up well.

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      1. 98

         CYong74posted 10 months agoin reply to this

         Thanks, Kenna.

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   3. 53

      Lady Dazyposted 10 months agoin reply to this

      Maybe the best way to start your own website would be to sign up for a free website. Then you can see how it goes before spending any money on it. There are still a few free website providers out there.

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   4. 67

      OldRosesposted 9 months agoin reply to this

      I have my own website and I agree with CYong.  I would also add that there is a lot of backend work involved in maintaining your own website.  Adding pages, fixing broken links, formatting articles and photos, keeping up with tables of content so that readers can easily find what they are looking for, it's never ending.  It's one of the reasons why I like writing on HubPages.  They do all of that for us.  We just write and don't have worry about anything else.

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   5. 93

      Kenna McHughposted 9 months agoin reply to this

      I have a WordPress website that generates earnings. It’s a topic I enjoy sharing. It’s a work in progress.

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2. 94

   eugbugposted 10 months ago

   I've written a blog with 40 small articles and Google won't even index it except for one page. It said the rest was unoriginal. It seems they want totally new content now, not new spins on content that can be found elsewhere. Writing absolutely new content is virtually impossible, because pretty much everything has been written about before.

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3. 85

   Venkatachari Mposted 10 months ago

   If your content is useful for daily life and is evergreen, you can jump to blogging.
   I am doing it for the last 12 years, and recently have been lucky enough to grab one payment per year (ie. 100 Dollars per year).

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   1. 96

      PaulGoodman67posted 9 months agoin reply to this

      Unless it's just a hobby or a nonprofit project, I think it's usually a playoff of earnings Vs. time and effort. There is something to be said for the old cliche that time = money.
      
      The best I did with a personal site was revenue of $25-$30/month but I stopped it because I couldn't justify the time and effort I was putting in. The maintenance was also tedious (e.g. checking links).
      
      A hundred dollars/year will pay some basic expenses (e.g. hosting and URL) and buy one or two coffees/month in the US. For me, it would have to be a labor of love for that amount of money, as it's not enough to impact my everyday life.
      
      That said, the dollars earned probably go further in India.
      
      It is a matter of perspective and expectations. I've long depended on writing to supplement my overall income and am therefore forced to take a rather brutal utilitarian view regarding effort and earnings.
      
      There are people who've earned much more than you or I, although I believe that it's generally become harder for the individual operator over the years. The golden age was ten or fifteen years ago, I would say.

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4. 94

   Thomas Swanposted 10 months ago

   I would love to get my own website going. It was hard work perfecting the layout, getting the domain, and writing eight articles to start it off with, but I can't even get approved on Adsense. Just getting indexed on Google seems to be a struggle. I'm having to submit URLs and hoping it accepts them, but often there's vague reasons for denial, similar to the vague reasons for denial from Adsense. I'll have to read/watch hours of information about why I can't get Adsense, make changes, resubmit, and wait another couple of weeks. So it seems to be way harder for "the little guy" to get a website going these days.

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5. 94

   ControlledChaos1posted 10 months ago

   Thanks for the replies everyone. It does seem that things will continue to get harder and harder for small article writers to get traction, especially with AI development continuing. Might be better to look into creating your own unique intellectual properties and and developing those. As long as you were passionate about it and took it seriously, you should get some type of devoted fan following that appreciate your work.

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6. 96

   PaulGoodman67posted 9 months ago

   Everything depends on what your goals are. Are you after views, income, or something else?
   
   Generally speaking, it's a challenging time to set up and run one's own website.
   
   From a purely practical perspective, it's easier than ever to construct and maintain a website, and AI will make it easier and easier. You'll be competing against sites that are already established, however, and the (relative) ease nowadays helps everybody.
   
   Perhaps the biggest challenge, though, is that it takes a lot of work and maybe 18 months or two years to get established and rank well (assuming that it happens, which is far from guaranteed). By the time you've done that, the internet world will look completely different, thanks to AI, so all that work may well be wasted.
   
   I agree with all that CYong says, including that you can easily end up spending more and more time on things like maintenance, marketing, building a readership, and trying to get the revenue right, and the writing gets squeezed out. It becomes tedious. It's nice here that you can just write and not have to worry about the other stuff.
   
   If earnings are a priority, it's easiest if you have a product or service to push and sell. Earning purely from ads has always been more limited and has only gotten harder.

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