What Happened to All the Bloggers?
Takeaway Points:
In 2012, the most popular and influential creators had blogs, which inspired new people to get into blogging and writing. Few of those blogs are still around, with creators either having shifted focus or vanishing completely.
Quicker and more stable internet as well as affordable film making equipment and programs allowed video content to be more accessible. The rise of social media like Instagram and TikTok has shifted content to be short, snappy, and attention grabbing by necessity.
Even if it’s not currently the most popular way of sharing your business or your thoughts, there’s value with sticking with something like blogging if you truly enjoy it!
When I started out as a coach, blogging was the big thing. It seemed like everybody had a blog, and there was so much great, high-quality content.
I often felt like I was getting in the tail-end of the online coaching business, and the field was already saturated. So many coaches created such great content, it felt like I had no chance of making it. Everyone had a product, everyone had a bigger following than me, everyone seemed to be charging more than me, and so on.
I started this blog in 2012 because I had spent years following some of the best and brightest in the industry and I wanted to start following in their footsteps.
And I struggled. I had so much difficulty getting off the ground. I never really felt like I knew what I was doing in the slightest until around 2017, and by that point I had five years of silly failures to look back on. I had multiple failed book launches and so many other missteps and forgotten projects.
But then a curious thing started to happen - my business continued over time to grow and develop, and I kept making content, and everybody else started to vanish.
Years later, I would check back on all the people that I respected and looked up to in 2012, people with much bigger followings than me, who simply just - vanished, or stopped creating content, or shifted their content, niche, and platform so much that they were practically unrecognizable as fitness coaches.
Video killed the blog star
I think a large part of the shift was just that the internet landscape was changing. Evidently, even in 2012, the tide was turning and long-form written content was on its way out. Video became a much bigger deal as filming equipment improved and it got easier to create and share video content on a faster and more available internet, and video enables creators to share their personalities in a way that’s hard to do in text.
Short-form content also took off. Social media became bigger, and with it, the need to make quick, attention-grabbing text content to draw viewers. Tik tok and Instagram elevated the need for visual short-form content. All of this led to new types of content designed specifically for these niches and platforms. Many people who would once have been bloggers became content creators for other platforms.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing! Many people found their niche in a different place. Many people on these platforms are making great content that simplify and boil down important topics for maximal exposure, and that’s great.
What am I still doing here?
Recently I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with another online coach, who I’d not met before. With awe and respect, he referred to me as a “veteran” for having been in this business since 2012, and I was honestly pretty surprised by his reaction - I’ve never really felt that my little coaching business, growing slowly and sometimes inconsistently over 11 years, has been much to be interested in.
But it’s also strange to see what’s happened to everyone else I knew and respected in 2012. A handful of major bloggers are still going and putting out regular, good content, but they’re in the minority.
Most have either stopped posting, or scaled back their content significantly. Many of the guys I used to love haven’t written anything in years or have written only extremely inconsistently.
Some have significantly outsourced the actual process of writing to contractors or employees, and the quality of their blog content has dropped significantly as a result. One guy I used to highly respect effectively has a blog feed now composed solely of posts about various silly supplements, all soullessly written by another employee who may as well be AI.
Some of these people have moved onto other platforms, most haven’t.
Some have shifted into other niches entirely, often vaguely-related stuff in the health and wellness sector, like mindfulness, meditation, spirituality, etc.
Probably the most eye-opening moment occurred when I checked in a few years ago with a guy whose content I’d always respected and appreciated, and who had developed a brand which was easily 10-15x the exposure of everything I’ve ever done. He would occasionally make odd posts on the internet, talking about how his business was struggling, and that something like an extra $100/year expense would significantly negatively impact his business - an odd claim for a man who was supposedly charging $200/month/client, and had a store full of products in the $30+ range. Surely, if he was making consistent sales at all, I figured that this must mean that he was making enough that a $100/year expense would mean very little.
Eventually, he announced that he was selling the brand and moving onto another career. I guess he truly must not have been making any money at all from the business. He might have been effective at building an audience and making content people cared about, but he was either a terrible coach, or had a terrible head for business and was unable to make sales, or some combination of both. He moved on, and the brand he built continues - I assume that the new owner is doing a better job at monetizing it.
I guess the strange thing is - I’ve never felt like I was doing a particularly good job, but somehow I’ve kept writing, and I’ve kept making money from doing it - so I don’t know why I’d consider stopping. I’ve continually done everything I can to continue making more content, reaching more clients, and expanding my business where I can. And I guess, in the long run, this has somehow put me ahead of quite a lot of people who moved on quite a long time ago.
I’ve said it previously and I’ll continue to say it - the size of your following is not a good indicator of how good you are at building a business online. I know plenty of folks with small followings and outsized earnings because they had a good head for coaching or for business, and plenty of folks with massive followings and undersized earnings. But, I guess it feels odd to admit that I’m probably somewhere in the former category, given that I’ve never felt exceptional about anything!
Where does blogging go from here?
I don’t really know what the next step is for blogging as a medium, or if it will just continue to fade away. I’ve always enjoyed it as a part of my content strategy, and it’s probably my biggest “love” of all the stuff that I’ve ever done as a part of developing my business. I really simply enjoy the process of writing, even if it’s not always the most viral content, or the most exciting. It was always the one thing I really enjoyed doing as a coach, and I found everything else (updating client spreadsheets, managing the website, managing a mailing list, all other kinds of content) less interesting or outright tedious at times.
I intend to keep blogging as consistently as I can. There’s still something here for me in terms of getting words out on a page, something that draws me in ways that other kinds of content can’t, even when I’m putting much more of my focus on these other kinds of content. YouTube videos can in some ways scratch a similar itch, and they’re the thing that I feel second most attached to, but even then it’s currently a pretty far distance.
I hope that long-form content can continue to have its own niche and its own appreciators, and I can continue to develop my business, at least in part, thanks to all the writing that I’m doing. But to be fair, I’ll probably keep writing all the same, just because I enjoy it.
This makes me feel a bit old at times, even though I’m not a terribly old person. It feels hard to have nostalgia for a different time and place that existed as recently as just ten years ago. Maybe it makes me a bit old-fashioned, or behind-the-times - clinging onto a form of content that is already outdated and likely to just continue getting moreso in the future. I don’t know, but I do know I’m going to keep writing.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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