10 lessons I’ve learned from 10 years of blogging

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I started blogging exactly 10 years ago today. A lot has changed in 10 years! Here are 10 lessons I’ve learned from 10 years of blogging.

I started my first blog Easy Peasy Foodie exactly 10 years ago today. A lot has changed in 10 years! But also, perhaps more surprisingly, a lot has stayed the same.

In this post, I am sharing 10 lessons I’ve learned from 10 years of blogging…

But this is not your usual list!

This is not a blog post that will regurgitate what the top 10 results on Google say… it’s not been ‘keyword researched’, or ‘SEO-d’… and it’s definitely not been ‘AI-d’ 😂

It’s a 100% human, written-from-the-heart, totally honest look at some of the bigger life lessons and more unusual things I have learned in 10 years on this crazy blogging rollercoaster!

But first, you need to know a bit of my back story for these lessons to make any sense at all…

How blogging changed my life

I started my first blog Easy Peasy Foodie back in May 2015. The blogging landscape looked very different back then! Almost nobody in the blogging world was ‘doing SEO’ or had the foggiest what keyword research was.

X was still Twitter, Instagram was still chronological, and Google+ was still a thing.

Most bloggers got their traffic from Pinterest and social media.

And monetization was mainly sponsored posts with a bit of affiliate marketing and, if you had ads on your site, they were Google AdSense.

My first blog posts were awful. Unfortunately (or maybe that should be ‘fortunately’!) you can’t see them anymore because those early posts have since been through at least 2 rounds of major updates.

But imagine a truly terrible recipe post with 1 blurry snap of unappetizing-looking food, a 2 sentence blurb and then the recipe, and you’ve just about got it. No recipe card, no headings, no step-by-step images, no helpful tips… And all on a website which looked like it had been drawn by a child.

Needless to say, I was not an overnight success.

Little by little, I figured out that if I wanted my blog to be a success I needed to a) dramatically improve my food photography b) learn SEO c) get a professional theme.

I fixed those 3 things and my blog began to soar… By September 2017 I had hit the magical 25,000 sessions and I’d started to hear about this new thing called ‘Mediavine’.

It took me until February 2018 to actually get Mediavine ads on my site, by which time I was at over 100,000 pageviews. (I still occasionally think about the $1,000s I lost dithering – but in my defence Mediavine was nowhere near as well-known back in 2017. In fact, I literally remember googling ‘Is Mediavine legit’!)

My food blog went from strength to strength, thanks mostly to my ninja keyword research and SEO skills. (This was STILL a time when not that many bloggers were doing SEO and most bloggers didn’t really understand the power of keyword research!)

I miss that time a lot. It was a time when there were still a bajillion underserved keywords and, so long as you were half-way decent at keyword research and SEO, you could get crazy traffic without even trying very hard!

It was during this time that I launched my second blog, Productive Blogging. I thought it was mainly going to be productivity tips. But it turned out what everyone wanted to know was how I’d grown my food blog so fast…

And so, in 2019, I launched my first blogging course: SEO Jumpstart. SEO Jumpstart is STILL my most popular course – it’s helped over 1,600 bloggers to grow their blog traffic and income… and has generated a whole slew of glowing testimonials and success stories.

And then, of course, 2020 started and Covid happened, and my food blog traffic exploded! Everyone was stuck at home, restaurants were closed, shops had run out of bread and yeast… and it seemed like the whole world was baking my soda bread!

In April 2020 I got over 1 million pageviews, and by December 2020 I was up to 1.6 million monthly pageviews! (Favourite memory – making $4,000 on Christmas Day that year 🙃)

Unfortunately, because so many people were stuck at home during the Covid years, blogging also exploded. Hobby bloggers got serious, people who’d always had blogging on their ‘maybe one day’ list actually gave it a go… and the highly lucrative SEO+ads model of blogging began to become a victim of its own success. In those days it wasn’t Google updates that were the problem, it was the sheer volume of competition from all those people who wanted in on the SEO+ads cash machine.

In many ways I was one of the lucky ones. My food blog traffic took a bit of a hit in 2022/23, but by 2024 it was pretty much back to those magical Covid levels of 2020/21… mostly due to a killer combo of keyword research and consistency.

Meanwhile, I had massively diversified my income streams by launching 6 more courses and 3 ebooks. And my Productive Blogging traffic had begun to soar – in large part thanks to my annual Blogging Income Survey… and my mad skills in getting featured snippets.

And then 2024 happened… and I watched in horror as something that I’d warned about for years and taken measures to protect myself from, but had always hoped would never actually happen, did actually happen… the SEO+ads bubble started to pop. And bloggers who had all their eggs in one basket – that basket marked Google traffic – started to see their traffic tumble… and with it their ad income.

Again, I’ve been one of the lucky ones… My food blog traffic is actually up year on year. But, way more importantly, my income is now far less dependent on my traffic. By focusing the majority of my time into turning my 3^rd party ‘borrowed’ traffic into subscribers and on diversifying into digital products, my income continues to grow year on year and I no longer need to live in fear of the next Google update.

Why have I been so ‘lucky’? I believe it’s in large part down to the 10 lessons I am sharing in this blog post…

10 things I’ve learned from 10 years of blogging

1. Nothing ever stays the same

This is perhaps the most important lesson of all. Blogging has changed beyond recognition over the last 10 years. And it will continue to change. Bloggers who accept that and are willing to change will continue to grow and thrive. Bloggers who refuse to accept this and refuse to change will fail.

This is no different to any other business model. One of my favourite analogies is Blockbuster vs Netflix. In the early 2000s Netflix saw the writing on the wall for the traditional model of renting videos from a shop. They innovated. Blockbuster did not. We all know how that story ended.

And it’s the same for us as bloggers. We can either stick our heads in the sand… and enjoy the same fate as Blockbuster video stores. Or we can accept that nothing ever stays the same… embrace change, innovate, and enjoy the same fate as Netflix.

I know which I’d rather!

READ MORE >>> Who moved my cheese? 5 lessons for bloggers
READ MORE >>> Blogging is changing. Here’s what you need to do to succeed.

2. Keep trying new things – be ahead of the curve!

And the best way to embrace change? Keep trying new things!

Once you accept nothing ever stays the same, the best course of action is to be on the lookout for that change… and try to get ahead of the curve.

Pretty much ALL the most successful businesses in the world are successful precisely because they got ahead of the curve. Netflix is just one example. But there are thousands more… Google, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, AirBnB, Dyson, Apple, Microsoft, Uber, Spotify, Amazon, ChatGPT… you get the picture!

My ‘luck’ in blogging has been in large part down to my willingness to try new things…

I got into SEO at a time when most bloggers hadn’t even heard of SEO.

I started selling digital products when most people were focusing 100% of their efforts into growing their ad income.

And when I started banging on about email marketing back in 2019, most people laughed at me – after all what is the point in wasting time on email marketing when there’s this wonderful never-ending tap of SEO traffic… oh.

3. Success is on the other side of failure

But to be ahead of the curve, you also need to be willing to accept failure comes as part of the deal. And when I say ‘failure’ I mean A LOT of failures.

Because not all the new things that you try will be a success.

What I haven’t mentioned in my story above is all my flops and failures! And there have been many…

I totally failed at YouTube. (And really video of ANY kind has never worked for me!)

When I first launched SEO Jumpstart, sales were pitiful… And it stayed that way until I learned about evergreen funnels. (A reminder – that course has since gone on to be taken by over 1,600 students! A very good example of Lesson #10.)

I have never been able to get social media to work for me, even though I have tried very hard over the years!

I’ve launched webinars that have been totally unsuccessful and run flash sales that have totally bombed.

But none of that matters, because, as I always say, ‘Success is on the other side of failure’. If you keep trying new things, you will eventually hit on the 1 or 2 things which absolutely blow up!

For all those ‘misses’, I had a few really big ‘hits’… Getting into SEO when everyone else was focusing on Pinterest and social media for traffic, getting really good at keyword research, getting Mediavine ads on my site before most bloggers had even heard of them, working hard to turn my ‘borrowed’ Google traffic into ‘owned’ email subscribers when everyone laughed at me for it, diversifying into digital products while almost everyone else was 100% focused on SEO+ads… and these are the things that have made ALL the difference.

And there are so many examples of this out there in the ‘real’ world too. One of my favourite examples is Dyson. It took Sir James Dyson 15 years and 5,126 failed prototypes to develop his first bagless vacuum cleaner. But now Dyson is a multi-billion dollar company.

If you want to be successful in blogging – or at anything in life – you need to keep trying new things and accept that most of those things will probably fail… But if you keep on trying and learning from your failures, eventually you will hit on the 1 thing that goes stratospheric!

4. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

For the last 4 years, I have conducted the Blogging Income Survey – a survey which delivers hard data on key questions like:

• Which is the best paying ad company for bloggers?
• Which are the most lucrative blogging niches?
• How long  does it take to start earning a full-time income from blogging?
• How much do other bloggers charge for sponsored posts?
• Is there is a correlation between the number of posts on a blog and income?

And every year, there is something in the data that really scares me.

And that is the high number of bloggers who get almost all their income from ads.

This scares me because ads pay a comparatively low RPM. Meaning that there really is only one way to get enough traffic to make ads ‘work’… and that’s Google. Which means this high number of bloggers is almost 100% reliant on Google traffic for their entire income. One tiny tweak to Google’s algorithm and that traffic could disappear… and with it that bloggers entire income and YEARS of hard work.

Believe it or not, I first started freaking out about having all my eggs in one basket back in 2018 – way before Covid, let alone the Helpful Content Update and the recent advances in AI. (When I say ‘be ahead of the curve’, I’m not joking!)

It was a huge reason why I started focusing so heavily on email marketing (to plug my ‘leaky bucket’) But it’s also one of the main reasons why I decided to launch Productive Blogging and the #1 reason why I decided to diversify into digital products.  

As I said in Lesson #1. Nothing ever stays the same. Change is inevitable. And even if you are doing crazy well with the SEO+ads model right now, nothing is guaranteed. Over the last 2 years we’ve seen bloggers who were seemingly doing everything ‘right’ have their Google traffic absolutely decimated by a single Google update.

If you have all your eggs in Google’s basket right now, I strongly encourage you to take steps to remedy that while you still can.

READ MORE >>> Why you should never put all your eggs in one basket – especially not Google’s! (And what to do instead.)

5. Don’t build on rented land

Google is just one example of rented land. There are plenty of others: YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook… ALL of these traffic sources are owned by people who are not you. They are businesses which have their own agendas and can tweak their algorithm – or even kick you out altogether – on a whim.

They can be great sources of free traffic, but you don’t own them. And they could be taken away at any moment.

This is why I always say – build your business on the only three assets you truly own:

• your website (so long as it’s self-hosted – you don’t truly own a hosted website)
• your email list
• your own products

By all means, take advantage of third parties (Google traffic, social media, YouTube, affiliate income, ad income etc.) as a supplement to that. But don’t build your whole business on them!

As one of my favourite quotes goes…

“Never put all your eggs in one basket… Relying on any one channel for all, or nearly all, of your traffic and income is not a business plan. It is a gamble. Never leave yourself at the mercy of any one channel or platform – because you have no control over a third-party. If one algorithm change can wipe out your entire business overnight, you’re doing it wrong.”

READ MORE >>> Why you should never build your business on rented land (and what to do instead!)

6. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater

HOWEVER, what I have also seen a lot of in recent years is a total backlash. Bloggers declaring SEO is dead / pointless / doesn’t work anymore.

The truth is somewhere in the middle!

No, SEO is not the magical traffic and income fairy it used to be.

But SEO is not dead either.

And, for most bloggers, Google is still the best source of traffic by a mile.

In fact, when combined with digital products, it can be pretty amazing, and something of a virtuous circle.

But this is a bigger lesson than just SEO and Google traffic. Right now people left, right and centre are declaring that blogging is dead.  

It’s not. The truth is that the OLD way of blogging is dead. (Well, maybe ‘dying’ would be more accurate.)

And we as bloggers need to be careful not to throw the whole blogging baby out of the window, but instead focus on how to pivot towards the next iteration of blogging.

READ MORE >>> How selling digital products will boost your SEO

7. SEO doesn’t change as much as most people think

This is one of my favourites. Every year I go to update SEO Jumpstart and find it barely needs updating.

Why?

Well, two reasons.

Firstly, because SEO doesn’t change as much as most people think.

And secondly, because SEO Jumpstart teaches foundational SEO principles, not short-term tricks and hacks.

It’s true that there are a lot of short-term SEO tricks and hacks that no-longer work.

But foundational SEO principles – like putting yourself in the shoes of your reader when you write a blog post and writing a blog post that fully satisfies the query they typed into Google, like making your blog posts easy and enjoyable to read, like making UX a top priority, like niching down and building topical authority, like writing based on true expertise, not something cobbled together from Google – THAT hasn’t changed in the 6 years since I launched SEO Jumpstart.

And it’s not just me saying this. Recently I’ve read a whole slew of articles which say more-or-less the same thing. Here are just a couple of examples:

SEO Rockstar Names 7 SEO Fundamentals To Win In AI Search

How to get cited by AI: SEO insights from 8,000 AI citations

What has changed is that churning out a bunch of ‘me to’ content that offers nothing new to the internet, but instead just regurgitates and rehashes what is already ranking, has stopped working.

And writing to the exact same hackneyed ‘formula’ that a bajillion other bloggers are writing to has stopped working.

And writing content that has been ‘SEO’d’ to within an inch of it’s life has stopped working.

And writing fluff and filler to stretch out your word count so you can ‘make Google happy’ and maximize your ad income has stopped working.

And writing content about a subject you know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT has stopped working.

And in my book, this is actually a good thing.

Nobody needs more internet slop!

If you want to read more on this subject, I strongly recommend reading this article on the future of SEO by Jono Alderson (Ex Yoast Head of SEO). It’s brilliantly written and a really refreshing perspective on the future of SEO.

8. The old rules of marketing haven’t changed all that much either

One of my ‘secret weapons’ over the years has been the fact that I went to business school and for the first few years of my working life I worked in the business world, including a stint in the buying department at one of the UK’s biggest retailers.

And I learned the ‘old school’ principles of marketing.

And funnily enough, they haven’t changed all that much either.

In the old school marketing world it’s all about getting inside your ideal customer’s head. Understanding what they truly need/want and delivering that… really well.

Blogging is absolutely no different.

And I don’t just mean with digital products (Although this principle is vital if you want to succeed with digital products.)

This principle should guide every aspect of blogging.

Take writing blog posts for example.

While many SEO ‘gurus’ out there have, for so many years, taught that you should google your keyword and then rehash what is already ranking, or else write to a magical ‘formula’, I have always taught that you should try to get inside the head of the person typing that keyword into Google…

Why did they type that?

What was the problem they were trying to solve?

What would help them solve their problem?

Then go write that blog post… and only include what will truly help them solve their problem… no pad, no filler, no waffle… no story of how your great aunt Maud used to bake this pie on the third Wednesday of every month during the war…

In other words… Get inside your ideal reader’s head. Understand what they truly need/want. And deliver that… really well.

Funnily enough that approach still works!

9. Focus on the 20%

This has been a huge lesson for me over the last 10 years.

You see, the problem with blogging is there is always so much you *could* be doing. It’s never-ending and overwhelming.

But here’s the kicker… not everything you *could* be doing will move the dial by the same amount.

In fact, it turns out that, like so many things in life, 80% of blogging success comes from 20% of the things you ‘do’.

But here’s the double kicker… Most bloggers (myself included in the early years) spend the majority of their time on the 80% of tasks that DON’T move the dial all that much. Things like replying to emails, social media, admin… and in some cases, even blog posts!

And the truly important things, the 20% of tasks that DO move the dial. They are the very things that keep falling off the to do list every day. (Or never even make it on there in the first place!) Things like creating digital products, email marketing and building evergreen funnels, for example.

I had to learn this the hard way. But once I figured it out, it made ALL the difference.

It’s the reason, for example, why I focused almost solely on SEO back in 2017/18, at a time when most other bloggers were dividing their efforts between SEO, Pinterest and social media.

It’s the reason why I’m so obsessed with keyword research. (One ‘gold nugget’ keyword can get you more traffic than 100 un-keyword researched blog posts. And no, I am not exaggerating!)

It’s the reason why, when everyone else was fretting about Core Web Vitals, I doubled down on keyword research and writing blog posts instead.

It’s the reason that I chose to focus solely on blogging when others around me were launching YouTube channels and podcasts.

It’s the reason why, in recent years, I have focused so much on email marketing and digital products.

It’s the reason why I keep banging on about digital product RPMs.

It’s the reason why I merrily break a whole bunch of blogging ‘rules’.

It’s the reason why these days I typically spend less than 5 minutes a day on social media.

It’s the reason why I only check my emails once a day… and always at the end of the day NOT the beginning.

And it’s the reason why I almost never do sponsored posts.

None of those other things are necessarily ‘bad’… and for other bloggers they may be part of their 20%. But for me they just don’t move the needle.

Here’s my challenge to you. Write down everything you *could* be doing and then try to figure out which of those things the 20% that will move the dial the most.

Then focus the majority of your time on those 20% tasks and minimize (or preferably eliminate) everything else.

Need help? Read this >>> The Money Task First Principle

And this >>> How to plan your day for maximum productivity

10. Keep going

And finally, keep going.

Would you like to know the #1 reason why bloggers fail?

It’s because they give up too soon.

One of my favourite graphs from the Blogging Income Survey is this one…

It’s been the same every single year.

As I always say…

Blogging is not a get rich quick scheme.

But if you stick with it long enough…

If you are willing to accept change, try new things and fail again and again…

If you are careful not to put all your eggs in one basket or build on rented land…

If you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater…

If you take the time to get inside your audience’s head, understand what they truly need/want and deliver that really well…

And if you focus on the 20%

You will succeed.

So what about the next 10 years?

What will the next 10 years hold for blogging?

Honestly. I don’t know.

Nobody knows.

But for the foreseeable future, I am going to be focusing most of my efforts on 3 things:

• Email Marketing
• Digital Products
• Digital Product-Focused SEO

I’m going to be getting in the heads of my audience and delivering the blog posts, emails and digital products they need.

And I’m going to keep trying new things.

But first, I am going to celebrate my 10^th ‘blogiversary’ with champagne and cake!

Your turn!

What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned since you started blogging? Let me know in the comments section below.

More on this topic…

• 35 things you’ll only understand if you’re a blogger
• 61 things I wish had known before I started blogging
• How much do bloggers REALLY earn? (Statistics from the Blogging Income Survey)
• Blogging is changing. Here’s what you need to do to succeed
• Is blogging FINALLY dead?

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