Around the world,  TDM,  Thoughts

[Bloggers’ Life] – Thoughts during Covid, Part 3

This article is unstructured, it will go in all directions, but I would just like to take a moment to write you and reveal, once again, the behind-the-scenes of the blog. I think it’s interesting and especially useful for me to track the progress of the blog, which is now part of my daily life

I work in digital marketing and more precisely Google Adwords. I have a big client and several small clients since we are digital nomads. The contract with my big client was supposed to end at the end of March 2020 and we were supposed to be in Vietnam at the end of February. The blog was going to reach 100 000 visits per month and more than a million visits per year (if we follow the trend). In terms of traffic, we were in the Top 15 French-speaking travel blogs

So, the initial plan for 2020 was that I would take the opportunity to become a full-time blogger and YouTubeer for a year, to see what the business would look like by devoting myself to it full time. As the number of Facebook & Instagram fans is a lot these days, I thought about doing an advertising campaign to make us better known (advertising campaigns are my job). The idea was to promote all the Vietnamese dishes I liked and show in video how to eat them (and order them). I already had the list of dishes to film, the restaurants to go to and the day by day agenda. This project was not going to bring me anything, but in exchange, I would eat superbly and could promote my country.

The Covid has passed in the meantime, the blog traffic is divided by 3. We had to go back to France in a hurry. It’s not so bad, but the “street food in Vietnam” project fell through because I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back and if I’ll be able to find my favorite restaurants because a lot of them have gone bankrupt in the meantime.

As a result, I end up with a blog that has almost no traffic => no more income from the blog.

So I spent my confinement finishing my contract with my big client, still taking care of the small clients, then as soon as the big contract was over, I got my crepe papers and started making paper flowers. And I had no idea what the blog was going to become, I even watched a live from travel bloggers talking about maybe changing the type of content: moving to more “lifestyle” content, or making travel guides more nature-oriented instead of city guides as usual. Except that (1) I hate hiking. You ask me to write an article about hiking in the Vosges and I die (2) what lifestyle ? I spend my day in pyjamas since 4 years 😀 loool when I visit, I’m in cotton, linen or merino wool 😀 so boring !

… so I continued to write as usual, about what I like and about “flashback” trips.

Small definition before we go on: on some articles, you may come across affiliate links. These are links thanks to which, if someone clicks on them and makes a purchase, I get a commission (between 1% and 5% maximum). The price doesn’t change anything for the user, but as it is “thanks to me” that the person discovered and bought the product, I get a commission. If I were dishonest, I would be better off recommending only expensive products, but I prefer to recommend products and services that I have tested or whose quality I am sure of.

Well, let’s get back to our story: It just so happens that on the blog, I had put some articles completely off the travel theme on cosmetics, months or even years ago. No one was reading them because we are on a travel blog … I wrote them because it’s part of my identity, I always travel with a suitcase half full of cosmetics and I test the cosmetics in each country. During the confinement, people started to have outbreaks of pimples because of an increase of chlorine in the tap water (because of the reduction of industrial activities, the water stayed longer in the pipes, the operators decided to increase the volume of chlorine to guarantee the quality of the water). My articles on cosmetics, which are 5000 words (very long), are starting to be read (people have more time so they really spent 7 minutes on each article). It goes boom, I’m ranked n°1 on Google France on several queries, I’m completely crushing other beauty bloggers, Beaute-test, Youtubeuses… I get commissions on products sold and the blog generates even more money than before Covid. WTF!

While looking for barrier masks to offer to all my relatives (remember, there was a shortage at the beginning), I came across a Vietnamese woman making homemade masks. We sympathize and I find her so cute that I make an article to promote her services – because she doesn’t have a job anymore because of Covid and can only live by selling the masks. My article is ranked n°1 on Google France for several weeks, she’s overwhelmed by requests and needs to lighten her workload. OK, I put the link to other services I recommend. My article appears twice on Google Discover, the other sites and my new Vietnamese girlfriend are overwhelmed with requests, I earn commissions from the sale of the barrier masks. I’m in “what’s going on” mode because in the beginning, the article was written just to help my Vietnamese girlfriend.

And then I understood. It’s a universal law, which everyone has been repeating to us for years but which no one really believes: When you give, you receive.
I never wrote these articles for commercial purposes, and it brought me as much money as the love I put into it.

When I learned this lesson, I felt like I was growing wings. Because I don’t have to worry about the content I have to put on the blog. I don’t have to follow trends, I won’t have to write articles I don’t like

Someone wrote to me to ask me what I thought of this or that product, which I have never tested, but which I have heard a lot of good things about. Since I was in France and the delivery was easy, I said to myself “let’s order these products, I’ll test and write a 5000 words review”. OMG, when it’s a request from someone else, how hard is it to get started. Even I, who loves cosmetics, I still can’t test products on order, it’s not possible. I’m not excited about the idea of testing them, I have no desire to test them, every day I see these products on the shelf, I tell myself “I have to test them for 28 days, come on motivation”. I couldn’t do it. Before, I was jealous of the beauty bloggers who received a lot of products. But now I understand why they become so jaded: it doesn’t make you want to test products just because you have to. All the excitement in using a product is when you choose it yourself, you’ve spent hours reading reviews, comparing ingredients and actives. The fact that it just shows up in our mailbox without any solicitation takes all the fun out of it lol.

We also began to get negative comments or feedback. For example, the fact that I use a lot of words in English, reproaches about the fact that we travel too much and destroy the planet and that we have to set an example now that we are more or less “known” etc. At the beginning, I didn’t want to block people by telling myself “everyone has the right to express his or her opinion”. And then I thought “wait a minute, the blog is like my house, you come to my house and blame me when I didn’t ask you anything” so I blocked them. I feel a lot of guilt thinking “that’s how you start a dictatorship, you shouldn’t block people” but as long as they’re not blocked, I think about it again and again and it affects me. Also, when the comments aren’t constructive and very “judgmental”, it affects me even more because I don’t know what to think about it, and I often conclude “omg am I that bad?”. That’s when I tell myself that no I won’t be able to become a full-time blogger or Youtuber, because my income will only depend on those sources, and in that case yes I will have a responsibility towards people, and that I will have to set an example and moderate my comments. I will have to write what people like to read, film in a certain way to get views. Some YouTubeuses, which I like very much… before expressing even a trivial opinion, apologize in advance “it’s only my opinion, that’s what I think, you’re free to think what you want…” since when do you have to apologize before expressing your own opinion on your own space, if it doesn’t break the law?

In short, as I told you, this article is all over the place. I don’t know what I was getting at, but it’s just to tell you about the thinking process concerning the blog since the beginning of the year. I wanted to make it even more professional, but I can’t do it. So we’re going to keep it as it is: to be mixed between cosmetics, facials, travel, childhood memories, paper flowers and handmade jewelry? And everyone will read what they want to read? 😀

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *