Is blogging dead? In short, blogging is not yet dead, but it’s always been a moving target, and the future of blogging is currently especially unclear, given the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI). In the meantime, bloggers should diversify and continue creating the best possible experience for their readers, and readers should be more discerning of their content. Learn more below, straight from a full-time blogger who follows the issue daily.
Introduction: How AI Changed the Blogging Game
Pre-Christmas 2022, I hadn’t even heard about ChatGPT. By New Year’s Day 2023, it was all I heard about.
For anyone not yet familiar, ChatGPT is a popular open-source software that is kind of like “the great and powerful Oz.” You can ask it anything or ask it to write anything, and it almost instantaneously spits out a response (“generative AI”). It can impressively mimic the work of humans.
ChatGPT isn’t the only type of artificial intelligence out there — for example, I use an AI tool to check my spelling and make grammatical suggestions (an absolute life-saver). It’s also helpful for translating speech to text. But, the breadth of generative AI’s capabilities has made it a hot topic.
Here’s an example of traditionally human work product of several minutes that took ChatGPT seconds to create:
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are “shiny new objects” that are, without a doubt, a game-changer in many fields, including blogging. Like other forms of technology, AI is here to stay, but it has positive and negative consequences.
While it can make us more efficient, it’s also often glaringly incorrect in many of the answers it provides, it can be used for malicious purposes (like creating false images and videos), and it will very likely make many human jobs obsolete.
As a blogger whose livelihood has been severely threatened by generative AI since 2023 (most of my industry is down up to 95%+ — yes, that much), I want to emphasize that generative AI is, by nature, artificial. It’s not an all-knowing and all-powerful blogging resource as it may seem to be. It simply predicts a likely answer based on the information it has trained on (including mine).
When you ask it a question, it takes copyrighted work product of mine, journalists, and authors, and then regurgitates it to you, with minimal or no citation to my content, which makes it impossible for me to earn money from sources like ads and affiliate revenue from my work.
I liken it to the days when people illegally downloaded music on Napster. It’s taking my work product and handing it out for free while also preventing me from earning money for it.
I hope this will change both through litigation and technological changes, as the public’s access to high-quality information may get far worse, coming only from these search engines themselves, not writers or even humans.
There are already many legal battles by authors against AI; for example, the education company Chegg sued Google for hurting its traffic with AI. In many ways, an AI-ruled world feels very dystopian, as search engines like Google, which has about 90% market share, are taking on the role of journalist and providing information without having any underlying experience or expertise in it. Indeed, AI may be the only journalist left when it’s done.
Let’s further explore the questions I’m often asked about the state of blogging, current blogging recommendations, and the future of blogging after ChatGPT and other powerful AI tools impact our daily lives.
Is blogging dead due to AI?
Not yet, but AI is making it harder to earn a profit from blogging, as the time and expenses of running them are substantial. Many bloggers are struggling.
I’ve been hearing that “blogs are dead” for about ten years. But today, social media and digital newsletters have replaced diary blogs of the original kind. These days, the most successful blogs are more like magazines, books, or encyclopedias that provide inspiration and/or information on specific topics, often searched for by a user with a problem.
If you’re wondering how many people have blogs, according to Web Tribunal, “there are more than 600 million blogs out of 1.9 billion websites in the world. Their authors account for over 6 million blog posts daily, or over 2.5 billion annually.” This means that about one-third of all websites are blogs.
I like to think of myself not really as a blogger but as the owner of a digital media company. We work directly and indirectly with many people to maintain our blogs, just like any other digital media outlet: web hosts, email marketing platforms, writers, photographers, ad management companies, talent agencies, social media managers, information technologists, graphic designers, etc.
If you have recently searched for a travel tip, recipe, craft, tutorial, guide, decor idea, and so forth… you probably read a blog to get your answer. Thus, blogs are relevant to you, whether or not you realize it.
To be honest, this type of blog is currently nearing death due to Google algorithm changes and AI like Google Overviews, which hand out our content to searchers without them having to click on our websites. They can affect up to 96% of click-throughs to our sites. (You may have noticed your search results are loaded with ads, Reddit forums, and unrelated content.)
Since late 2023, thousands of professional bloggers like me have lost up to 95%+ of our gross income (because traffic=income). It got so bad in our industry that Google hosted a Creator Summit to get feedback from bloggers (though it continues to hurt and not help us as it steals our content for its own profit).
Many bloggers have already quit given the unaffordable costs of blogging. Others have sold their homes, taken their kids out of private school, went on food stamps, etc. I’ve lived modestly on my savings while continuing full-time blogging to improve my content.
The Future of Blogging: Will AI replace it?
Not yet. But, the remaining bloggers will need to work harder and diversify, and readers will need to be more discerning about who and what they trust.
The Bloggers Who Remain Will Need to Work Harder and Diversify.
It’s only getting more complicated for bloggers to make money. Thus, we will see fewer bloggers, and they will offer more paid content services and products. The days of free blog content like recipes and travel guides may be over.
Branding and community building are also becoming more critical, as these things are important to humans yet challenging for an AI chatbot to duplicate.
Bloggers should be placing more emphasis here and focusing on efforts like challenges, groups, forums, storytelling, contests, giveaways, and more personal experiences. The more technology drives humans away from personal connection, the more they may need to seek it out.
I foresee smaller communities (email newsletters, clubs, etc.) becoming more trendy with readers since social media has become incredibly saturated and overwhelming. I’ve created a Members’ community for The Literary Lifestyle.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many people return to slower, more thoughtful content consumption on their terms.
Blog Readers May Need to Be More Discriminating
Generative AI is still not that accurate. Just do a couple of test searches, and I think you’ll quickly see what I mean. I find it to be wrong more often than not.
And, in some circumstances, it can be harmful. For example, I have seen examples of it altering images and videos in ways that are both wholly false and dangerous political propaganda.
This will require readers not to believe everything they hear and see and to think more critically about who and what they can trust.
Recap
Blogging is not yet dead, but it’s always been a moving target, and the future of blogging is currently especially unclear. In the meantime, bloggers should continue creating the best possible experience for their readers, and readers should be more discerning of their content.
