How to succeed at blogging in 2025
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Blogging is changing. Don’t stick your head in the sand. If you keep on doing what’s been successful in the past, it’s unlikely you’ll succeed in the future. But if you look at how the blogging landscape is changing and change with it, there is so much opportunity… not only to survive but to positively thrive. Here’s how to succeed at blogging in 2025…
The rise of AI, the changes to third party cookies, the fierce competition in many niches, the constant Google algorithm updates…
It’s easy to conclude that blogging is a dead business model… but I don’t agree!
Blogging is definitely changing, that’s for sure. And what’s worked in the past is unlikely to work in the future. But change is normal.
What makes the difference is what you DO in the face of change.
Successful businesses are those that see change on the horizon and adjust what they are doing accordingly. Unsuccessful businesses are those that just carry on doing what they’ve always done.
Successful businesses see change as an opportunity. Unsuccessful businesses see change as something to fear.
If you keep on doing what’s been successful in the past, it’s unlikely you’ll succeed in the future.
But if you look at how the blogging / SEO landscape is changing and change with it, there is so much opportunity… not only to survive but to positively thrive in 2025… and beyond!
How blogging is changing…
My view is that the SEO+Ads model that has worked so well for the last 5+ years is becoming a victim of its own success. Because the SEO+Ads model is such a wonderful semi-passive, potentially VERY lucrative business model… the blogging/SEO landscape has become a LOT more competitive.
Suddenly to succeed you needed to be on your absolute A game: constantly feeding the content monster with masses of high quality, SEO friendly, cookie cutter blog posts; regularly updating your entire back catalogue; taking professional quality photographs; learning half a computer science degree in order to make your website lightning fast, yet somehow simultaneously making your website look highly polished and professional – all while landing high-quality dofollow backlinks from major publications and polishing your E-E-A-T halo.
As a result his model has become increasingly less passive and less lucrative.
And the worst of it? Some bigger, richer blogger who has a higher DA and a team to help them, can just cruise in and ‘steal’ your 20 best keywords… decimating your Google traffic and ad income virtually overnight.
Dark clouds looming on the horizon
And that’s before I even mention the looming dark clouds on the horizon…
- The rise of AI-assisted content writing tools
- The rise of AI-assisted search engines
- Recent Google updates which have hit many bloggers hard
- The rise of TikTok and short-form video
- The changes to third party cookies
All this is enough to make many bloggers throw in the towel, or at least consider it… with cries of ‘I can’t do this anymore’ and ‘It’s too hard / too depressing / too time consuming / no fun anymore!’
Threat or opportunity?
If that’s how you feel, I have good news. Because I believe this ‘threat’ is also an big opportunity. It’s an opportunity to change and do things differently.
I believe future of blogging will be all about niching down even further, growing an email list of passionate fans and selling digital products.
In this EMAIL+PRODUCTS model – though SEO will have its place – you’ll be much less dependent on high volume, transactional Google traffic… and it will be much more about being unique, standing out from the crowd and building a brand… less traffic, but higher value traffic… and I believe a more passive business model, that will bring the joy back into blogging.
How to succeed at blogging in 2025: step by step
Step 1: Stop replying on the Google for the majority of your income
Relying on Google for the majority of your income is a hugely risky place to be.
And it’s not just me saying that, this is an extract of from an article in Search Engine Land…
“Never put all your eggs in one basket. Especially not Google’s. 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 company overnight, you’re doing it wrong.”
Step 2: Diversify into digital products
The reason why so many bloggers and online business owners are so reliant on Google is because they monetize via ads and/or affiliates.
To earn a decent full time income from ads/affiliates alone requires huge traffic volumes – the kind that you can only get from Google.
Fortunately, there is a solution: start selling your own digital products.
Digital products have much higher RPMs than ads and affiliates, meaning you need much lower traffic volumes to make a decent full time income from digital products.
Better still, a digital product is an asset you own and have complete control over (unlike other monetization methods, such as ads, affiliates or sponsored work).
Step 3: Double down on email marketing
Email marketing is absolutely foundational to the success of a digital product based business. I literally cannot emphasize this enough – if you get your email marketing wrong, your digital product business will almost certainly fail.
Email marketing runs through EVERY ASPECT of a successful digital product business… It will help you do market research, validate your ideas, nurture cold traffic into warm leads and nurture warm leads into customers.
It will also help you onboard your new students, get good testimonials and success stories, and turn happy customers into advocates and high performing affiliates.
Step 4: Build a product ladder
One of the problems with diversifying into digital products is it’s very hard to make a decent full-time income from one single product.
The solution?
Build a product ladder.
I explain why in this post >> Why you need a ladder
Step 5: Build a sales funnel
But just having a product ladder is not enough, you also need to build a sales funnel. I explain what a sales funnel is and why you need one in this post >>> How to build an evergreen sales funnel (sell more, work less!)
Step 6: Pour traffic into the top of your sales funnel
Finally, when you have Steps 2 – 5 in place, all you need to do is pour traffic into the top of your funnel and, if you’ve done everything else right, sales will come out of the bottom of your funnel.
This can be Google traffic, but this can also be social media traffic, podcasts, summits, bundles, webinars, collaborations, guest posting… even paid ads.
And because of the nature of digital products, your focus is much less on the QUANTITY of traffic and much more on the QUALITY of that traffic. 100 highly targeted ‘perfect customers’ are worth far more to you than 100,000 Google traffic randoms.
Need help with this?
But maybe you’ve read all this thinking, ‘This all sounds great – but I just don’t know where to start!’
Truth be told, there are a lot of moving parts to building a successful digital product based business, and unless you do them all, you are unlikely to succeed.
But the good news is, I have just the thing to help you…
The Digital Product Success Academy!
DPSA will take you step-by-step along the entire journey of building a strong email list, creating a product ladder, launching your products the right way, building evergreen sales funnels and attracting the right kind of traffic into the top of your funnels.
The Digital Product Success Academy will also help with all the other things you need to do to build a thriving digital product based business, such as:
- Market research
- Creating products your audience are actually willing to pay for
- Building high converting sales pages
- Launching your products properly
- Building an evergreen sales funnel
- Doing digital product specific SEO
- Growing your own personal authority
- Harnessing the power of customer advocacy
- Converting your traffic into red hot leads with high converting lead magnets and new subscriber nurture sequences
Basically, I’ve done all the hard work for you and come up with the perfect step-by-step plan to follow, so you can just follow my roadmap and focus on one thing at a time.
Plus, the DPSA has huge amounts of support, motivation and accountability BAKED IN and a supportive community of likeminded online business owners.
If this resonates with you and you’re ready to take your online business to the next level, click here to find out more!
- How to future-proof your blog
- How much do bloggers REALLY earn in 2025?
- How to make money blogging in 2025
- 5 ways to boost your blogging income WITHOUT more traffic
- Blogging is changing. Here’s what you need to do to succeed.
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