Once upon a time, I had a travel blog called Overstuffed Suitcase. I talked about my travels, my city Istanbul and how to navigate it, and practical travel tips.
But then the pandemic happened, and my traveling came to a halt – give or take a few careful vacations in the south of Turkey.
Since I, and most of the world, was traveling a lot less often, keeping the blog didn’t seem worth it.
But even though the pandemic sort of slowed down, I had other reasons not to have a self-hosted travel blog on WordPress.
Here’s why I shut it down:
- Expensive hosting.
Hosting companies love boasting extremely reasonable prices, but once you host an entire blog with images and start getting traffic, that price goes up considerably.
- The upkeep: maintenance, updating
Starting a blog is only half the battle. Not only do you need to update it with solid content, but you also need to maintain it. Plugins need to be updated, new ones need to be added and buggy ones need to be deleted. You need to check for broken links, create organic traffic by linking relevant old posts to new ones, update posts when necessary, back up your posts, and on and on.
- Promoting
If you want your writing to be seen and shared, you need to promote it. And promoting successfully takes strategy, time, and effort – things I am really short on at the moment.
- Having to come up with ideas
Coming up with solid ideas regularly can be a challenge even for the most veteran writers. But trying to come up with ideas for several blogs, editors of other magazines, and promoting my books… Yeah, I didn’t have the brain space.
- Lack of time, and lack of need
One function of a writing blog is to serve as a portfolio.
But the truth is, I didn’t have a travel blog when I got into travel writing. And now that I have many more clips under my belt, I didn’t need the travel blog anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still have a travel blog. It will just take a different form.
- I still have one main website/blog to show I know how to write for/edit/manage a WordPress.org site.
When you are pitching clients, it’s useful to show you know how to run, edit, and promote a blog. I already have such a blog.
What’s next:
- Overstuffed Suitcase will be moving to Medium for now.
- I’ll be pitching travel pieces to other pubs and magazines.
- You can always read up on what I’m up to here at Addicted to Writing, my writing website and sign up for my newsletter where I share writing/pitching/marketing tips and free excerpts from my novels.
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Too Long, Didn’t Read?
Running a blog takes time, energy, and money, especially if you want it to make money for you. When it takes more than it gives, it’s time to restrategize.
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Do you blog? Where are you in your blogging journey? Let me know. And if you leave links, I’ll check them out.
