Thinking about starting a blog?

The future might not be as bright as you think.

The landscape has changed, and not in your favor.

The rise of AI, dominance of authority sites, and the shift to video content are shaking up the blogging industry.

But don’t worry—there’s a way to stay relevant and thrive.

Let’s dive into why blogging as you know it might be dead, and what you can do about it.

Why you should trust me?

I started as a hobby blogger in 2013.

Later in 2015, I dropped out of university and took blogging as my career.

Over time, I built and sold multiple websites, and even released several training courses related to blogging.

I became a brand advocate for blogging and encouraged many newbies to start their career as a blogger.

Over the years, people have been publishing content about the “death of blogging” after every Google update.

And when Google Snippets were introduced, there was a lot of noise about how no one would click on blogs anymore, but they were wrong back then.

This time, however, it’s different.

Let me explain why.

Reason #1 – Rise of AI

When ChatGPT was first introduced, it opened the floodgates for countless AI tools to hit the marketplace.

Among these, Google launched Gemini, which introduced something called generative search.

Now, when you search for something on Google, it can answer the query directly by pulling content from top-ranking pages for that keyword.

As of writing this blog post, only a certain percentage of search queries are affected by Gemini AI, but this is just the beginning.

Being a machine learning model, Google Gemini will continuously improve on its own.

In the coming months, Google plans to roll out the generative search experience to even more users.

🤔 Some argue that it would be unsustainable for Google to use the immense computing power required to generate these AI-driven answers for every single query. However, they might be overlooking a key point—these instant answers can be cached and served to multiple users, reducing the need for constant computation.

Additionally, Moore’s Law suggests that over time, computing power becomes more efficient and less resource-intensive, further supporting the sustainability of AI-driven search.

While Google does include links to websites in its AI-generated answers, these citations may not drive significant traffic to small and medium publishers, as Google tends to favor more “trustworthy” sources.

Adding to this, Google is increasingly prioritizing segments of long YouTube videos, Shorts, and user-generated content like Reddit threads.

It’s also becoming clear that Google’s AI is being trained on YouTube transcripts, and with the explosion of video content, the data Google is accumulating will only increase.

Reason #2 – Authority sites

You might be surprised to learn that just 16 companies dominate most of Google’s search results.

Here are some SHOCKING insights from this study:

• The top 16 companies owned 12 of the top 20 content sites and 7 of the top 10
• When you search for any keyword in Google, whopping 86.1% of the time you encounter any of these websites owned by these large media companies.
• Across various affiliate niches, these companies appeared on the first page of Google 85% of the time. That’s not it, in 1,584 of 10,000 search results they claimed four or more of the first 10 organic rankings.

This has been an issue since the beginning, but it’s gotten significantly worse over time.

As I mentioned earlier, when it comes to search results, Google’s AI-generated answer now appears at the top, followed by the traditional featured snippet, a YouTube video, and a Reddit post.

👎 Only after all these the blog posts show up—and even then, the top spots are typically occupied by large authority websites that Google deems trustworthy in a specific domain.

To make matters worse, Google has been releasing updates month after month that further demote the rankings of small publishers, effectively pushing them out of the spotlight.

This has made the search landscape increasingly resemble that of new-age media, where only the biggest players can control what we see and hear.

Reason #3 – Video content

It’s well documented that the modern human’s attention span is now lower than that of a goldfish.

Forget about reading long-form text.

People today don’t even have the patience to watch lengthy videos.

They want short-form content that entertains them within 15 to 30 seconds, max.

In this age, video content is set to excel over text content for the foreseeable future.

Google’s favoring of YouTube results and even short video content over traditional text content is a clear indicator of this shift.

🫠 I can confidently say that the only type of text content people will consume in the coming years will be generated by conversational AI, tailored specifically to their readability level and preferences, allowing for interactive engagement.

For many, especially Gen Z, traditional text content feels too cognitively challenging.

Does that mean people have stopped reading articles altogether?

Not at all.

But:

When it comes to reading full blog posts or articles, most folks are now heading to social blogging sites like Medium, LinkedIn, or X/Twitter.

Because these platforms offer social proof—you know other audience can like, clap, and comment.

Also Google is favoring these sites.

In fact, Semrush reports that Medium’s search traffic has more than doubled over the last two years.

So what’s now?

Well, I’d say blogging is 80% dead, at least for new publishers.

I wouldn’t recommend starting a blog unless you’re targeting a niche with a severe lack of content or diving into viral topics leveraging Google Trends.

If you already have a blog that’s pulling in good traffic, now is the time to double down on content production, using AI as a force multiplier for creativity. Here are some of my ChatGPT prompts for you to steal.

When you look at the hype cycle or the technology adoption cycle, blogging is well into the laggards phase, maybe not even at the late majority.

I’d give it another two to three years before blogging is completely dead for small publishers.

Right now, starting a new blog could be a big opportunity cost.

You’d be better off creating video content and repurposing it into blog posts to capture whatever traffic Google might still send your way.

The new path

The future of content marketing is creating video-centric content.

Videos are unique in that AI can’t fully replace them.

Here’s the roadmap:

• Identify the problems you’ve solved: Instead of focusing solely on a niche, reflect on problems you’ve solved in your personal life and how you did it.
• Document them: Document these solutions on a platform where your target audience is active (e.g., Instagram for Gen Z).
• Build a community: Capture your audience into a community or email newsletter.
• Offer coaching: Help your community members solve their own problems through personalized coaching.
• Monetize your expertise: Get rewarded for the value you provide through your coaching and problem-solving skills.

Here are some examples:

For instance, if you overcame productivity issues with mind mapping skills and it led to a job promotion or the ability to handle multiple jobs, you can help others facing similar challenges.

Or, if you’re a woman who stayed in shape during pregnancy and have strategies to share, you can assist other women and be rewarded for it.

Conclusion

Blogging, as we know it, is on its last legs, especially for new publishers.

With AI, authority sites, and video content dominating the landscape, the barriers to success in traditional blogging are higher than ever.

Unless you’re in a niche with little competition or capitalizing on viral trends, starting a blog now could be a costly misstep.

Focus on video content and use AI to maximize your efforts.

Blogging isn’t entirely dead yet, but the clock is ticking for small publishers.