Hi pals

I made a few posts years ago on supporting your friends, supporting small creators, and similar. The algorithm has changed and so have many sites since those posts, plus my own understanding has changed since then too. I wanted to make a more updated post with what I understand as a creator online NOW in 2025 from the different perspectives of different creative practices.

this post has some affiliate links

First, on SEO

some aspects of SEO are pretty simple and easy to do. But the more you learn, the harder it gets. The more jargon the SEO bloggers use, which makes it even harder to vaguely understand anything being said and you suddenly have 47 tabs open from falling into a research hole because of one word an SEO article used that made no f-cking sense. Why do you even need another language to talk about SEO? Just use plain language!? Every article or blog on SEO has different tips, they become outdated so quickly and often don’t have the date attached to the post (which pisses me off immensely) so even if it is a guide specific to the sites you use, you still can’t find anything because the site has had a move around.

YouTube

As a YouTube video creator, the algorithm can make me want to tear my hair out. My videos were doing really well (in my opinion, from my own perspective, I was really pleased with my statistics at the time) until a few months ago. I have slowly been clawing my way back but I’m still not up to the same standard of views I was at before mid-September. Now, I can’t pinpoint exactly what caused this but these are my suspicions…

I finally hit 1,000 subscribers

I started posting shorts that were doing better than normal

YouTube brought in a paid promotion tool

My content wasn’t really any different to usual when the views suddenly dipped, so I experimented a little with nothing much to show for myself. Three videos had done REALLY well since, but they were super obvious topics that would do well. My Heartstopper season 3 video, then my Married at First Sight UK video, but also closer to the end of 2024 my video on Strictly did well. Besides these three, everything else has struggled a lot (at least initially) even though these are videos I have made regularly and would get reasonably good views before this dip. So, I’d done everything possible with my content itself to get back to where I was but there hasn’t been much of an impact. It has been slow going to get anywhere with this issue.

I have often noticed that when people (or myself) reach certain goals which are also requirements for upgrading or partnerships, that’s when people notice a shift negatively in their content interactions. This has been true for different social media platforms, and it often tends to be true for marginalised creators or creators who lean towards more left wing political content.

BUT I have also noticed that when trying to Google these issues, the number 1 thing that continually comes up is SEO. I can’t lie… I hate SEO. Initially it seemed to be all about getting your work to be seen by the right people, the people looking for your work because it is relevant to them and it was reasonably simple, many of the options were available to everyone without paying a single thing. YouTube didn’t seem to require these things for a long time and anyone could go viral and develop a platform. I feel like the playing field has shifted a lot on YouTube. SEO on YouTube now is more mystery than ever. Many articles giving tips are OLD and OUTDATED. Youtube itself says the tags don’t weigh that heavily for discoverability and SEO anymore but all the articles talk about this as the main and only thing to worry about. Now you need to also include a few # tags at the start of your description, plus use keywords in your description, use keywords in the title of THE VIDEO FILE and in the tags of the file before you even upload it, as well as in the title of the video when uploaded. I think you also need to use relevant words in the file name of your thumbnails… They recommend you pin a comment, share your video everywhere, heart a comment, use a custom thumbnail…. there are many things you ‘need’ to do. And that’s why I hate it, because even if I do it… it rarely makes much difference. And it’s enraging to see nothing but blog posts telling me I need to learn SEO and it’s all my fault because I apparently just am not using SEO properly, and the irony is I’m only even seeing these posts BECAUSE THE SEO THEY USE ISN’T RELEVANT TO ME OR WHAT I AM SEARCHING! But they do it ‘right’ and get to rank above relevant searches.

Which is another point I have generally, but I’ve also noticed on YouTube. Searching for specific content has become so difficult because of this issue. It takes much more work to get the right Google searches to provide something relevant now, and it’s the same on YouTube. I’ll type in something super clear like a creator name and subject I know they have done a video on before, for example Books and Lala Goodreads and the first few videos are usually relevant, but now there’s an ‘explore more’ tab which cuts in pretty quickly you may not even realise you’re no longer in your search category.

Once I got passed these issues, I did find YouTubers and other people on different sites like Reddit or Quora have been discussing these problems as well with their own channels. Quite a few people have remarked on the new paid promotion feature. Some YouTubers have actually tried this new feature and as soon as the paid time was up, their channels flatlined with interactions and organic traffic. I personally think, and so do some other creators on the smaller side on YouTube, that this feature being available has disrupted a lot of channel’s traffic by just existing. It seems that there could be a purposeful suppression of content made by smaller channels to push them towards paying out for the promotions. There are lot of other issues with this feature as well that other channels have gone into so I suggest if you want to know more about why this feature isn’t even particularly great even if you do use it, check out these other channels.

I saw my views drop drastically around when this feature became available to me. Many sites don’t roll out the same features all at once to everyone, I believe this feature has been available in beta or even finished form to other creators long before I ever saw it. But I remember getting a notification to introduce this feature to me when my views had dipped. But also, it happened post 1k subscribers, and around the time I was posting shorts which were doing better than they usually did so I cannot personally pinpoint it to one thing disrupting my traffic, but I do think it could have been a combination of these factors that has disrupted my slow growth on YouTube.

I have also re-trialled the shorts thing since, and it’s weird. In some ways it has benefitted my longer videos especially with the ‘related video’ feature that links directly to another video you made and you can link to long-form ones… but my views are down again on the long-form videos. My views have been down but my watch time keeps rollercoastering up and down for long-form content. So… I don’t know still if shorts have an impact on long form content views and watch time… but it doesn’t seem to help… like at all even though all those youtube hacks and SEO channels say they’re a good way to find new people (they aren’t)

Many other sites and their rules have also disrupted how much the creator can do by themselves. I may have discussed this before but a lot of facebook groups, twitter/X communities, reddit threads, etc. do not let you share links and do not let you self promote even if the content is relevant. I used to get a lot of my traffic from Facebook ironically, because I could share my videos and blog posts in these groups, especially chronic illness topics… but now it’s near impossible to do. Other people have to do that promotional work now. Plus, as Twitter/X is ‘dying’ as everyone claims, many of the community tabs just DO NOT get used anymore. There are hardly any posts in communities that used to be super busy a few months to a year ago. I have been trying to explore and understand other platforms like bluesky, Discord or Quora to see if there is a way of using these platforms to promote and boost my work to untapped communities, but they can both be quite clunky and not very obvious in how they work.

How you can support small YouTubers you like

Interacting! With YouTube liking the video, leaving a comment, liking and replying to other comments can all help boost the video in the algorithm. So does sharing videos, subscribing, and watching them. Doing these things helps show YouTube that people are interested in this content, this creator, this topic, etc. Plus, people don’t realise how much sharing content can actually really impact someone’s success. Sharing videos can cause more people to subscribe and return for other content, it can cause an influx of more viewers on the video. I say this because I have seen the direct cause and effect with my own work. A friend on Twitter/X who has a large following there, shared one of my videos and that lead to 10 views right away. I know that may not sound like much but 10 views could be 30 minutes of watch time, and that could be the first boost of 10 views which helps lead to another 10 because they helped the video circulate better.

If you are supporting a creator trying to reach the level of partner, the best you can do is listen to what the creator needs you to do. You can carry on doing the above, as it does continue to help, but there will be more of a focus on watch time and subscriber count. So subscribe, when you share the video tell people to subscribe, watch more of their videos, put on a playlist they made and let the videos continue playing in the background.

There is also a well known issue that many channels just stop showing up in your feed, so you need to actively look for them, put their notifications on, or maybe joining their discord or mailing list which alerts you when they post videos, which is ridiculous because if you can’t rely on a site to actually show you what you are there to look at and have basically bookmarked as ‘I want to keep seeing this’ by subscribing… what are you going to do as a normal person? Unfortunately, the pattern is looking like more work on the viewers/fans/supporters which isn’t ideal.

Artist

As an artist, I’ve used numerous platforms to promote my work and to sell my work. Much of what I said above is a similar issue for every platform and every kind of creator, so SEO is another pain in my arse as an artist. Finding and using the right tags, collaborations with larger accounts, people sharing your work to their audience, cross posting… What’s the issue now?

Instagram is constantly changing and removing useful features

I was notified recently that you will no longer be able to follow tags anymore, the option will just disappear. This is a problem, tumblr runs in a way that you can follow blogs or tags and it works because your feed will be full of both accounts you like to see AND tags you like. Not every account will only post a certain theme forever, which is why it can be helpful to follow an aesthetic or topic tag like #cripplepunk or #yellowjackets for example. Individuals might not only post about Yellowjackets forever, and maybe these are the only posts of theirs you do like. Removing the possibility of following tags means you kinda have to wade through more posts we aren’t interested in rather than zooming in on a fandom or a subculture you love. I’m not sure what the point will be of tags on instagram after removing this feature to be honest as it will require more ACTIVE searching from users rather than being passively delivered content you want. It’s like when Facebook started USING tags but without any clear reason to do so or clarity on HOW tags were supposed to work.

Instagram also just hates people using tags? At one point it was fine and it didn’t matter now many tags you used in your caption. Then it caused problems and was seen as spam, so you’d put the tags in the comment section which used to work, I don’t think it works now. And now you can use like 5 maximum in your description. It partially seems pointless when people can’t follow tags anymore, do people really use the explore tab much? I don’t because it’s usually just really spammy posts from people with huge platforms. I know we get a little bit of post recommendations whilst scrolling our own timelines now, but I DOUBT my posts have been seen there at any point. My recommended posts are all memes!

Also instagram in general rarely works? I see a lot of my artist friends complain about reels especially. They often glitch out, you can’t save drafts, etc. I run a bunch of accounts (like 4 or 5) and each of them is at a different stage of instagram update. They are ALL on my phone, I started ALL of these accounts on my phone… why are they all so drastically different? They all have different bugs. Scheduling was a great update for instagram, but you can’t reschedule a post you have already scheduled it just won’t listen to you and pretends it has changed the posting date. But also a lot of the time, I can’t even see what I have scheduled because of numerous bugs and glitches, and even when you can it’s not an easy lay out where you can see when each post is scheduled right away with one look, you have to go into editing each post. And recently, scheduled posts have just not posted but told me they have… I am heavily debating whether I should go to the effort of setting up some of my instagram accounts with buffer or go back to using the meta business suite to schedule on instagram even though that never actually worked either… like come on! Why don’t any of these billionaire sites work?

Selling sites are… frustrating

Each selling site has its ups and downs and it’s own set of guidelines as well as its own algorithms. One thing they all seem to have in common now is posting regularly keeps you circulating in their algorithms which… is ridiculous? Secondhand selling sites like vinted are meant to be for the average person selling their spare items for a bit of extra cash, they aren’t meant to be designed for SELLERS or BUSINESSES but they are now. Depop has changed from a secondhand clothes selling site to more of an art or vintage clothes seller site. EBay fell out of favour when they changed the free listing policy (which they have now brought back and made better than originally, but my god is it hard to understand what the rules are on eBay anymore… and listing there is such a faff) and it’s annoying having to re-list the same things over and over. (Though Depop and eBay both let you copy already created listings if you are posting multiple of the same/same type of item, but neither of them save the images previously used which can be a ball ache.)

I tried googling Depop best practice articles for how to create listings that help get your items seen but it was another outdated article (with no date on it AGAIN) which was talking about comment sections which no longer exist on depop. I did learn though, that when they were still a thing, comments would help boost that listing and your profile generally. And I did learn that liking and saving listings does help the algorithm and are still functions available on depop.

But they did say you basically have to keep relisting items that haven’t sold for a while to keep you relevant in the algorithm. Some selling sites like eBay and depop now have copy listing functions but you still need the photos to hand, and I think you can list on a computer for these and vinted (I don’t know if this would be a good idea or not… I’ve not tried it myself) and listings with ‘free postage’ do better on depop like? of course they fucking do but I need to cover postage so the item is either hella expensive, or I charge fucking postage. What then?

Then as a seller, think about the fact a lot of selling sites also take a percentage off the FULL earnings so you lose money off the postage as well as the item you sold. (DEPOP) which is why I started using vinted in the first place, it was easier to know I didn’t have any fees to worry about when listing and selling items. The buyer covered their postage and covered whatever fees there were, and you just get the money you asked for on the listing or what was agreed with the buyer.

The postage can be its own issue too on vinted. You can have a selection of shipping methods available for buyers which seems useful initially. But sometimes they just remove this option and force you to accept ALL shipping companies which is bullshit as a rural seller, like there isn’t a yodel drop off anywhere near me or near anywhere I regularly go! Also for some of the shipping options like Evri or Inpost, you might randomly not get the option between printing the label or using a digital label which can be really annoying if you don’t have easy access to a printer (we have a printer, but I have to send all my documents and labels to my mum to print for me because for no good reason the printer refuses to link to my phone or laptop…)

And annoyingly most of these platforms are integrating AI? Why are they automatically using AI to come up with a product description on depop? How do I turn it off!?

I won’t go into Etsy because everytime I think about or look into Etsy as a stage for selling my work, it just sounds ridiculously difficult to understand. The fees are ridiculously high, you lose MORE MONEY if someone finds your shop through an Etsy run ad, one bad review fucks your whole store… like no thank you, you can shove it.

Dreaded AI

Most of the internet is forcing the use of AI upon us in some way. Everyone has an AI chat bot that doesn’t do or say anything useful, they all have their versions of siri, everyone is using ChatGPT for the smallest things, Google now has AI summaries of your search which 90% of the time are INCORRECT, like I said above the selling sites are now using it to come up with product descriptions for you, and even mainstream publishing has been caught out using AI art instead of paying a human artist! AI learns from our images on the internet as well as our words, but can never get it quite right either way. The way NaNoWriMo was justifying its use of AI and promotion of using AI for writing by pinning it on disabled people who DO NOT AGREE with the claims made… Companies and individuals are refusing to pay any fee for an artist (or writer) to do a job, because they can get it free from AI. Which also has as astronomically bad impact on our ecosystem and (surprise surprise) involves exploiting people’s labour. It’s exhausting fighting against literal machines! Why pay a person with the skills and the equipment to design your book cover, your event poster, your instagram graphic, when you could mock one up badly yourself or ask AI to do it?

The Cozzy Livs of course

It’s easier to buy more items from massive chain stores when you’re pinching pennies because they don’t have to pay as much for labour, or for materials, it has been reported how Amazon purposefully under-charges for products to cause smaller companies to go under and then Amazon buys them too. (Whilst trying to find this specific news, I found… more just as bad news) This is one that has happened a lot with books, but I’m sure it has also been the case with other industries as well. However, we are starting to see a shift in this, as one of the above article mentions, that the gap is closing between a lot of mainstream powerhouses for companies and indie sellers. Many of my friends online have noticed the ‘sales’ shops are having are extremely lackluster. I noticed that you only got a discount on black friday on Amazon if you were a Prime member. My friends mentioned many indie sellers are having better sales than Amazon, or just generally their prices are way more affordable year round for the same type of products. And yet… I’m still not realy seeing the change in buying patterns yet.

And on the other end of that, charity shops are upping their prices on items that… well, are really not worth that cost. Pricing items with almost as-new cost tags, charging double for books and bric-a-brac… I often used charity shops for materials to work with, but a lot of the time I am struggling to find anything I’d be able to use that’s a good price for upcycling to be worth it. Why are you charging so much for tacky home decor signs, tatty copies of books, and beaten up picture frames? So obviously, for me as an upcycler it’s hard for this reason, but also it means my audience of buyers are finding it harder to justify buying things. Even though I have a broad price range, people are still extremely hesitant and that is further impacted by postage… which brings us onto…

Postage costs are ridiculous

You used to be able to send a small parcel for the price of a 2025 first class stamp. I often have to pay for tracked or signed-for postage when it is people I don’t know purchasing from me online to protect myself and the buyer. But that keeps creeping up. In-store prices for 2nd class signed for letters are something like SEVEN POUNDS. So you have to buy the shipping labels online (which makes it hard to be sure what size you even need… I’m gonna have to buy one of those bloody letter size hole things eventually so I can check more easily) to get a somewhat reasonable price, but it keeps getting higher! I’m sure when I started doing this not even a year ago, it was £2.30 for 2nd class signed for letter. Now it’s £2.70/£2.77. I use second class stamps for my friends which are currently around 89p (which has risen a lot in the last 5 years alone, but is still a way more reasonable price!) you also need to be able to afford a printer, ink, and paper for the online labels, or trust that the postman will bring a label (which I have never tried coz… you really think???) Another daft thing now is a signed for small letter is £2.77, but a 48 hour tracked large letter up to 100g is £2.70. Literally what is the point?

Plus if you are posting abroad, there’s so many rules you need to follow and if you go into a post office to do it hoping they will know what you need to do to be able to post something abroad… spoiler, they don’t know shit. The first time I sent a small parcel to Australia for my friends, it came back to me 2 weeks later coz the f-cking post office worker didn’t tell me I needed to fill in a CUSTOMS LABEL. Didn’t even f-cking mention it! Girlie, YOU are the post office clerk, what do you mean you don’t know how to do your f-cking job?!?!?!?!?!?!??! I spend my life doing other people’s jobs.

Then there’s all the other shipping options now where you have to drop parcels off at drop off points or lockers and none of them get any cheaper than the £2.70 because they don’t cater to smaller parcels the size of letters. Plus Evri usually loses or destroys it’s parcels so you have to be EXTRA careful using their service anyway… but at least postage is covered on vinted I guess…

I have also started getting shitty remarks on depop about my postage fees assuming I am using the depop postage (I’m not coz tbh it makes no sense) a lot of my listings I just have it rounded up to £3, but I try to keep the postage accurate, but as I’ve already covered… depop takes a percentage from the WHOLE sale fee including for postage. And I will not post my work without some form of tracking, and buyers should understand and respect that. It protects the both of us for a start, we both know if you have it, we know if it is lost, and we both get our money back if it is lost! Lots of people have scammed me in the past out of items and money due to not using tracked or signed for postage. I will not do that again unless it is people I know. And postage prices just continue to go up and up and up. You simply cannot blame the sellers. If you have a problem with the rising costs, email your MP or people at Royal Mail and complain.

Cross posting promotional posts and scheduling…

It’s exhausting. This is also relevant to Youtube videos! Most scheduling systems suck, like that’s it. If you use a 3rd party one, you need to keep updating the connection to these other sites. X was supposed to not allow this anymore but it still works with buffr, if anything I have more issues with facebook.

Facebook has its own scheduling system which also works for the connected instagram account. You can schedule facebook page posts, reels, and stories, you can also schedule stories and grid posts on instagram this way, as many times as you want, but only up to a certain date. However, each post you complete resets the scheduling calendar to weekly and the week you’re currently in which makes me want to throw my laptop, but you can reschedule posts you have already created and it works.

Instagram also has a limit how far into the future you can schedule, but you can schedule loads of posts and reels but NOT STORIES, you can’t f-cking reschedule anything because it does not work. You also have to keep the media on your phone or it won’t be able to post it, and you can’t see like a calendar.

You can schedule YouTube community posts both on the app and on a computer, obviously I mostly use this to try to engage with my subscribers and share my videos, but I also promote my artwork there too. Again, no visual calendar but you can see a list of the scheduled posts better there. I don’t think you can link up any 3rd party sites to schedule posts on Youtube Communities though.

You can schedule through twitter/X but again it also sucks but can be handy if you are in a pinch and on a computer, You can’t schedule on the app.

You can schedule on tumblr obviously but I don’t think it is recognised as an important enough site, as I don’t think you can use a 3rd party site for scheduling. You also can’t see a calendar of scheduled posts, but you can see the posts in the queue.

I thought I’d try out scheduling on pinterest more a few years ago, but also it has many requirements to meet ‘good SEO’ and tbh I ignored all of it, I don’t care man. They briefly had groups?? pinning groups? I literally don’t know how this was supposed to even work seeing as pinterest isn’t exactly interactive? So I made separate boards for my projects and use a 3rd party site (but occasionally use the in-site scheduler too, in-site has a limit as well with how far into the future you can schedule) to schedule bare bones posts daily because apparently that is a requirement of pinterest to care about you at all. But your new posts won’t get any interaction, you basically post new posts to get your old posts more interest… I don’t know, but it has rung true. The older the posts the more legit they are in pinterest algorithm and my traffic has boosted to anywhere between 11k and 16k just from bare bones posting daily. For my artwork, I basically just see and use pinterest as another visual portfolio like instagram. It’s an easy way to send someone a quick link where they can immediately see all the art you’ve created. Pinterest supposedly likes long portrait images and videos but I’ve honestly not found this to ring particularly true.

Reddit is actually very similar to facebook, you often can’t post your own links or self promote in any way in any of these threads. I don’t know if you can set them up with a scheduling tool because I don’t see the point. I share my videos there on my own profile when they go live and that’s it really now.

I am on bluesky, but the computer interface is clunky and the app isn’t much better to use, and doesn’t link to scheduling sites. I don’t know if communities/groups work or how to use them and if # tags even work either. Unfortunately bsky is not very clear with how you can use it, and what features there are. So I basically just try to post a promo post or two daily when I can remember. (you can find me by searching artiecarden btw, give us a follow lol)

Cross posting promotions is important, people have their preferred socials whether it’s for business, hobbies, being social or what so you have to hit them everywhere possible. But it takes up a lot of time and each platform has very different ways of posting you can’t just copy/paste.

How you can help artists you like

Whichever your preferred social platform is, do what you can there. There is no point in trying to promote across platforms when you actually only use one or two. Like the posts, comment, if they post videos then watch them, sharing of course, and if there’s something a friend of yours or other group etc you follow would like TAG THEM.

Again, there’s no need to set up accounts with every selling site so just use what you’re set up with and will already use. I don’t know about eBay or Vinted, I may update this post another time if I bother finding more into it. But if you have a depop account, follow the artists’ pages, like the posts (probably not all at once, but scatter some likes around) and send listings to people you think will appreciate the work and maybe buy it.

Writers & Editors

Many publishers are using AI to write or edit as well now, so many writers are not getting work they used to get but also a lot of the pay for freelance writers hasn’t gone up with inflation at all. Mainstream publications are also usually in Tory pockets, and if not specifically Tory, it’s definitely in Right-wing pockets and they don’t have much interest in publishing much work written by, for, about leftists or leftist values and are too busy demonising migrants, Black and Brown people, Trans people, and disabled people/people in benefits. 🙂

There are less and less smaller publications you can work for or with for an actual fee or wage, take Gal-Dem for example having to shut down due to running costs. I lost my freelance role with Salty World Magazine due to the fact they could no longer afford to pay sub-editors. My two role after that were unpaid.

I haven’t written for a publication in years because I didn’t like the way the industry worked and how little it paid for how much work was expected of you. I haven’t had an in-house writing job because I’m disabled and all the publications I was interested in working for have had scandal after scandal about how poorly they treat people that work for them (looking at you Pink News) and most call outs or job post advertisements are shared through twitter (or were? still are?) and where are they going to be now? You always have to know the exact right people to follow… like I dunno man, looking for work (that doesn’t pay much) is a full time job as a writer/editor of short works and articles.

Bloggers

If you’re a blogger, it’s similar issues. Collabs are necessary to build your page, you need backlinks and good SEO. There’s a lot you can do and control, but there are a lot of things you can’t do depending on your mode of blogging. I don’t know about other sites, I used wordpress out of ease and back when I started blogging after graduating from my Creative Writing BA in mid 2018 it was a good site with a lot of options that were within reach financially… now… um… well not so much.

I kept to the free plan for a long time as it was just finding my feet, age 23, aspirations of being a personal essay or opinion piece writer and editor on the side of writing my novels… then the pandemic hit and I basically became a book blogger because there was nothing much else to talk about as I was then going through some of the worst moments of my life as a chronically ill person (which I documented more on youtube) and media analysis hadn’t really come to me yet. I eventually thought I was going to take blogging to the next level but if I wanted to improve my SEO for sponsors, traffic and other pay related benefits, I needed to go a plan up so I could use my own domain and not the wordpress one. I had no idea what I was doing, I genuinely don’t know how I did it all… there were a lot of issues. I got there eventually and then I stayed there.

I had some good backlinks from working on posts with a few blogger friends, and doing the book lists (which also have really good Page Authority apparently, happy accident) but also from just… putting my blog link in my profiles on different sites. Depop, funnily enough, has really good DA and is a great place to just plop a blog link. Tiktok too, pinterest… and leaving comments on a few big sites including my site link. But that only goes so far. They want it to be organic, so once again… it’s mostly up to other people to do your promoting.

The other issues I came up against (and still do) is that you cannot monetise from ads without upgrading (which is a big price jump) but that’s all you get from upgrading one level. I’ve toyed with the idea of using this blog, this site, to have a selling page for some of my art work, but I’d have to upgrade 3 levels for that and pay… like £450 a year. The middle level between these two upgrade options is the level where you get plugins, and see with plugins it opens up a much easier and more accessible way of doing some of that SEO. And actually you can’t do a lot of SEO without using the plugins on wordpress. You’re literally gate kept out of SEO with a paywall. And the longer you don’t do any of these things, or don’t keep getting new backlinks, your DA starts slowly decreasing and there isn’t much you can do about it except get your wallet out. Oh also that middle level is £250 a year lol. They also have even higher tariffs and personally none of them are worth the price hike. I’m sure a few years ago they were much cheaper, and less levels??? so you got more for your money. But that’s another block on blogging related success.

I have been looking into self hosted but it does cost more than WordPress hosted, BUT it also has more freedom for earning potential (ads on the site, making a selling page, etc.) and general freedom with what you can do. There would no longer be a possible threat of ever being deleted by the hoster site and it will unleash better SEO options. I’m hoping to do this before my next bill comes through in early June 2025… but looking at options for UK sites… you pay more and they will do it all for you but if you want a better deal… you have to do it all yourself and I don’t know how to do things like that. At all. They have said they can guide me through it but it is still very daunting.

Many platforms are making it impossible to break through the algos and are pushing creators to pay for promotion. Not everyone can afford that obviously (and low key, its a scam really) so please take some time to consider the creatives you enjoy (especially small ones) and commit to helping support them if you can’t support monetarily. If you follow me on any platform, liking, commenting, sharing are all really helpful steps for my youtube, blog, or art shop to keep being seen. You know watching videos really helps me on youtube. Sharing promotional posts can lead to a bunch of new interactions, new followers, new viewers, and even sales. You just never know what your share could do for that creator.

Sometimes as well, I think many of our timelines are clogged with stuff we don’t want, don’t follow, or don’t actually care about. It can be a good idea to look into how you can curate your feed better to see these creators more on your timelines. Instagram has a favourites feature which can help, and YouTube has the notification button… it just depends on what works for you as a consumer of content online. And generally I truly believe a lot of this is just straight up thanks to capitalist pigs who care more about their profits than creating anything that works because I cannot get most platforms to do what they are supposed to do, especially people’s websites and it is enraging.

I hope this post could at least be helpful in showing you the struggles, some of the solves (both that creators can do and things the audience has to do) and I hope we see some more small creators thriving online again.

~ Artie