How I Lost 80% of Traffic and Rebuilt My Blog

0:00We talked a bit about how AI has hurt. What specifically has it done from a revenue standpoint? I was getting close to the million page views a month. Basically an 80% hit in traffic, which therefore is directly correlated with my revenue. What is working for you or what you have seen with some green shoots? But I have the thousand posts on my site that are still potentially driving traffic. My email list has become like very, very, very valuable to me. Social media, where is

0:33that coming into play for you? of people have noticed if you Google something now, you will see a lot of short-form videos. So then if your short-form video is showing up on Google, great, maybe you'll get some followers, but you won't necessarily get traffic to your website. How you're structuring what you send [music] out and when? Yeah, I would say I'm getting

0:53very detailed with my email list. How did you land on the 10 or the $20 price point? How did you land on the the the way that you structured it? So my strategy is All right, welcome back to the Niche Pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bauman. Today, we are joined by a returning guest, Carrie Forrest with Clean Eating Kitchen.com. Carrie,

1:13welcome back. Thank you so much. A lot has changed. Well, just spill the beans, will you? I mean, a lot has changed. That's what we're talking about today. And we talk about this from time to time. It's been really good. We're kind of in a little bit of a season right now of inviting some previous guests back. Um we like to do that time to time to just see how the different stories that we outlined maybe a couple years ago come to play. Your story, which you joined us a couple years ago to share where you were at with your website, focused obviously in the food niche, um has gone through a

1:43lot in the last couple years. We're going to talk all about it. I think this is going to be a very raw conversation. I think if you're listening, you're going to hear Carrie share a lot of different things that she's been doing, trying, failing, succeeding, all of the above. So it's going to be a great walk into what as website owners, you know, where are we going with things and what can we try? But um you know, Carrie, a lot of people have started listening since you came on. Maybe some people who listened last time when you were on, but

2:06give us some backstory on who you are. Catch us up to um to to to kind of what you were doing prior to starting this website. Okay, well, I've been blogging since 2009. So it's essentially been my career since my early 30s, and I'm now 50. So it's it's like really spanned most of my career. I did have a short career as uh doing nonprofit fundraising, and then I started to learn about how bloggers were really making really good money. I mean, I was like really shocked because those early first eight years or so, you'd be lucky to

2:48make a few hundred dollars a month. And then I heard about people uh bloggers like Pinch of Yum. They're kind of one of the standouts. They were doing income reports and making money like 8,000, 18,000 I mean, it was like numbers I couldn't comprehend. And so that's I would say around like 2016 was when I kind of got on board with SEO and doing keyword research. Up to that point, I didn't really do that. It felt like something magic was happening. I mean, like the money was happening. The the passive income, the um like I want to say in 2022, I think just from Amazon affiliate

3:38sales, I want to say like my 1099 from Amazon was like $35,000. And I was doing nothing, like literally some links on my website. And um I'll tell you the numbers now maybe when we get into a little bit more, but I mean, it's just kind of wild how the the income from having a content website was so good in those early

4:042020s. Now, since AI has released, it's just been a huge shift. Um and there was a Bloomberg article, a Bloomberg investigative report, I want to say that's what they called it in late 2025. So several food bloggers specifically were interviewed for this Bloomberg report, and I was one of them. And we talked about how AI has impacted our sites. And in that article, which we can link to, it does have a like subscription required, although if you kind of dig around, you can find a non-paywall um link to that article. It's called like how AI slop has taken over the internet, and it's specifically referring to

4:51recipe sites like mine. And um in that report, I told the reporter that I had lost about 80% of my traffic and therefore my income. And um so that's how it was reported in the article, and so a lot of the bloggers who were in that article have gotten some press around it, and we've been talking about it. And that is kind of more specifically related to this AI issue and how um like Google is now presenting AI created recipes instead of our like food blogger you know, well-tested, well-documented recipes. And so that's just kind of an example of what has been happening, but essentially food creators

5:39and I think creators in a lot of other niches too, like you've covered like the travel niche, um and just other kind of content-based sites have really been hurt by AI um because specifically AI overviews. Because now when you Google a search term, which like my site used to rank very high for, now it's an AI what we call an AIO, an AI overview. And so

6:04Google just presents the answer. And so that's kind of where we are now. I mean, I haven't given a lot of numbers other than the 80%. Basically an 80% hit in traffic, which therefore is directly correlated with my revenue. There's a lot to sort through here because when you last came on, as you mentioned, uh so much has changed since then. And I think that it's valuable for content creators to understand there's been multiple shifts that have happened somewhat simultaneously, right? You talked about AI overviews. I mean, I think a lot of people would put the hallmark date that things really started to change rapidly as when um ChatGPT,

6:47or at least [clears throat] the version that uh hit in November of uh uh it was either '22 or '23. I think it was '23. Uh I get my dates mixed up at this point, but yeah, that was a big moment for AI and for onboarding of AI. Obviously though, we also had the HCU, the helpful content update. Uh that one I know, that was September of 2023. It had rolled out before that, but for the one that hit the blogging community, it was the September 2023 update. And then a lot of little things along the way, you know, you have uh you have changes in just how much um SERP real estate is

7:16available. Uh Google has dramatically lowered the amount of uh of links that go out to websites in the SERPs irrespective of AI overviews. But now, as you mentioned, AI overviews has kind of taken over the SERPs. So we got all these factors at play here. All of them hurting the ability for a individual website owner to kind of drive traffic

7:36from organic search. For you, um you talked a bit about how AI has hurt. What specifically has it done from a revenue standpoint? Traffic down 80%. Is that synonymous one-to-one with revenue? Where were your revenue sources and what is that had it how is that had an impact on your revenue? Yes, I would say it's a direct correlation. So I really had about 90% of my revenue was coming from page views. So I I work with Mediavine, so I'm paid by basically a thousand page views, and then the um RPMs based on the page views. So my page views at around 2022-ish when I was on last time, I was getting

8:25close to the million page views a month. Um and for a food site, um usually our RPMs are pretty good. I think financial sites are also pretty high RPMs. So a million page views a month for me was translating to somewhere around 20 to sometimes upwards of 30,000 a month uh through ad revenue. And then that would also like that that Amazon affiliate would kind of get folded in there. Um but it was that Amazon was directly

9:00linked to the Google search traffic. So now in 20 starting in 2025 has really was really when things started to get really rough for me from a revenue perspective, and when I've really kind of been trying to diversify my revenue like by trying a whole bunch of different things that we can talk about. But um at this point, um my Amazon revenue is cuz I I like I said, I don't do too much like direct um like pushing my Amazon links. It's more from the search traffic. You know, it's maybe like $150 a month, maybe $200 a month. And then the Mediavine revenue is maybe four to five

9:48grand a month. Yeah. So which yeah, huge drop. So it's almost about a 20% of what it used be. Um and I've have cut my expenses hugely. Obviously, when I saw the writing on the wall that the content, I mean, how it was was like I would identify a keyword. Let's say something as like there was one, I think it's yellow

10:17fruits. Okay, like I'm a nutrition site. If I didn't have that keyword research, I would never write an article about yellow fruits. Like my audience, my core audience of like women with chronic health issues, what do they care about a list of yellow fruits? But because I was so into like the keyword research game, I saw there's um a lot of search traffic around yellow fruits. And so I, you know, had it had an article written for me for my site cuz I had article writers. And I published it and literally like the next day, I would be at the on the front page because my site

10:56was uh you know, had a lot of history behind it and it had some authority. And so then all of a sudden I'm getting 10,000 views a month from this kind of like fiddly article about yellow fruits. That really isn't adding that much. So in a way, now that um I feel like I'm starting from scratch again, I'm kind of like taking a different approach of like what is actually valuable to my audience instead of that old game of keyword research

11:28that isn't working anymore. Listening to hear what you've tried and the results you've had, the experiences you've gotten from it, I think it has a lot of value for people listening. That's that's kind of why or one of the reasons why we're having you back on. Before I get into talking with you about that, just a quick moment to do to address and thank our sponsor Quiet Light. Um and just to outline for you that they are a business that can help you figure out what your business might be worth. Um whether that's a path for you to eventually stepping away um or just to get a valuation. Uh and

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12:27valuation at quietlight.com. Um again, just go to quietlight.com if you'd like to get a valuation and see uh what your business might be worth. So let's talk at this point about some of the things that you have tried, whether successful or not, because again, like I said before we talked about Quiet Light. Some things are each of these things are probably going to be things that people have thought about trying, whether they've tried it or not. And so it'd be really valuable to hear you go through some of the different things you've tried to to to to connect with your audience and better monetize them. And

13:00then what was the result of those? Okay, sounds good. And I would like to address these web stories that we had talked about on my first interview several years ago because web stories were something that really drove a ton of traffic for a lot of bloggers and particularly for me, it drove probably hundreds of thousands of uh page views and traffic a month. And I want to say that around 2023, they really kind of dropped off the map as far as appearing on the Google front page. Um if people don't remember, they were kind of like um they were like a slideshow and you would publish them

13:40through a separate uh web story plugin that I believe was made available through WordPress and supported by Google. So those have gone away. Like if somebody has listened to my old interview and they're wondering about that situation, uh it was kind of like one of those things I think that Google tried. And um like maybe they were trying to compete with Instagram stories or something like that. But those so I have personally no

14:05just no index all of those on my site. Mhm. Um so unfortunately, that is no longer driving uh traffic for me, although it was a good traffic source for maybe 2 3 years. Um something that I have also tried are paid workshops to my audience on very specific topics. Um because I am a nutritionist, I have some specialized knowledge. And there it's maybe like if I start to notice people asking or commenting on a particular blog post, I actually think that that uh that's probably something that I could do better and that I would

14:44encourage listeners to pay attention to. If there is a certain blog post in a very specific topic, I think that is a really good indicator that those needs are not being addressed fully for your audience and you should really lean into that. And I would try to do it in a paid way. Um that's something that I feel like I could personally do better. Um it is that like the people are really asking you for your knowledge. And I think in this age of AI, it's also a really good indicator that AI is not answering their question and they're probably looking for somebody's

15:24personal authentic experience. Um so I've done it a little bit with varying levels of success. Like if I do a workshop, I will try to sell it for 10 or 20 dollars. Um because the truth is our audiences are used to getting content for free, so I can't all of a sudden ask them for 100 dollars for a workshop. That's that's just going to be too big of a hill for them to climb. But 10 or 20 dollars, especially in a a potentially um economy that, you know, where costs are increasing for people, I try to offer things at a price where I I know it's

16:02not going to exclude people. So maybe I'll get 20 30 participants, which is amazing. Like those are 20 to 30 people I'm connecting with authentically. But at 10 dollars, you know, for me and the amount of time that it is to put in to making a workshop, to make 300 dollars, uh it's challenging. You know, it's challenging when that kind of money was coming so easily with so I want to say little work, but more of like I'm on a passive level before. But it is an option, you know, 300 dollars is 300 dollars. Um and for some people could potentially build out into something more like a like a course or

16:43ongoing workshops. For me, I found it's just a little bit too much work to do on a monthly basis. Uh one thing I've tried that really doesn't seem to work is asking for tips. There's um a plugin that I I still have, I'm pretty sure. It's called Buy Me a Coffee. Um and I've it just makes it like easy for somebody to uh to give you like a 5 dollar tip. Um I think using Stripe. I have put it at the end of my emails, just like a little line, like, "Hey, did you like this email? Um

17:22buy me a coffee." I've made maybe, I don't know, less than 100 dollars on the probably year that I've had that installed. But again, for some people that could be um something that uh maybe their audience is is super grateful for a certain topic or something like that. Um one thing that I have kind of been playing with recently, but I

17:47did not go too far is AI created video. Um I attended a workshop um cuz I am active on YouTube and they offered like a free workshop to to kind of learn how to play with their AI video tools. Um which are really amazing, I will have to say. Um and it was a little bit enticing to play with, but my audience was not

18:11receptive to AI generated videos. And um I kind of got that message loud and clear. And it felt it felt uh inauthentic to me. So it's just not something that I'm personally pursuing, but I have seen other creators have tons of success and I think it kind of depends on your niche um with what you can do with AI created videos. But again, the one that I played with is specifically in the YouTube creator tools. Um and I'm sure you can find like a little workshop online like I I attended. They're easy to use and

18:51pretty amazing with what you can do. Uh uh one thing is the workshops. And I'm just curious um specifically how you landed on the structure of the workshop you had. And if you could just share any more details about that. And and the reason I ask, and I realize they're totally different spaces. We had a travel blogger on

19:11uh maybe a year ago. Do so many of these, they run together. But I know that we had a travel blogger on, we can link to in the show notes, who who did a pivot on their business um after helpful content update, after AI overviews, after a lot of this stuff entered, and they're now mostly running

19:25tours. Um and that's their main stream of income. Now, travel is different. You need to get on a plane to go see a place. You need to go drive your car to go see a place. You need to do in-person stuff. So there is a component that isn't online and is in-person. And then you tried some of these workshops. So I'm curious like um specifically, how did you land on the 10 or the 20 dollar price point? How did you land on the the the way that you structured it? And would there be other reason other opportunities inside of that to try different structures to see if that or

19:51was it something compelling, something you saw that made you realize there's no way that this is going to work for me no matter how I structure it? Well, I was kind of talked into it as far as like um Like I have known for a long time that I need to diversify my income but for so many of those years, you know, like for a good four to five years content was making me so much money that it really didn't make sense for me to do anything else, like to spend 10 hours

20:22building a workshop. But again like I I always knew at the back of my mind like that this um kind of like magical space that I had entered where I was getting so much search traffic from Google, I knew that it could end at any time and so I just was all I've always been trying to think of like revenue diversification options, but until it really like became obvious that my revenue was seriously declining um then I started to kind of like take them seriously and I kind of played with it here and there the last few years and the workshop it's a little bit overwhelming the

21:05technology, but the technology that I came across is called Milo I think it's called MiloTreeCart and it makes it super easy like with just a few clicks you can set up a sales page and there's like templates for you. And I know the owner, she's a she's another um blogger. Um she had had like a party website back in the day and so I don't even think that there is a fee for this service or there might be um at this point or maybe they just take like a cut of your workshop earnings, but it's it's a small cut. So it just makes it super super easy to set up a

21:48workshop. And I do think um and you just end up using Zoom, so you can either use a free version of Zoom or a paid version as long as you um like you can use the free one if you keep your workshop under 45 minutes, I think. And so there's not a lot of cost involved, so I do think it's a it's a really great thing to play with with your audience if you think that um you know, your audience is going to be receptive and I think the key is you need to have a pretty strong email list because you're going to be a marketing

22:21or maybe a social media following because you're going to be marketing the workshop through your email or maybe through social media. I found email to be the most effective. And then you will record your workshop, so then you can sell the recording, you know, depending on your topic and if it's relevant, you know, it's not like time based. Um for me like doing like nutrition topics, it's very relevant to to um record it and then sell the replay. Like I have a clean eating intro one that I continue to sell to this day in my weekly emails. I think I sold it for like $7. And again, the price for me

22:59um I was just thinking about really like where my audience is, you know, and with rising food costs and just like a normal kind of um middle-aged woman like what she would be willing to spend is how I came across the like $10 price point for me. So I've heard you have threads I've heard you have threads of email of social media and all these sorts of things. I I do want to transition and ask you a bit about what is working for you or what you have seen with some

23:40green shoots. Um I know that there's some things that you have seen start to work well and are going to be kind of the backbone of where you are going forward. If if if we if we could look wait into some of those things and get a kind of a picture from you on what has started to emerge as the right path forward. So my strategy is is still like driving traffic to my website. It's just that the Google kind of like freebie that I was getting, that almost million page views a month is now about 200,000 a month, so it's not nothing, but it still benefits me to

24:15have good quality technical SEO. So I'm I'm like avoiding broken links on my site. I'm still doing keyword research here and there, but I'm not publishing new content like I was. Like I want to say in 2023 I published or republished like 350 blog posts a year. Now that is probably gone down to like 50. So my new content is just really collapsed, but I have a thousand posts on my site that are still potentially driving traffic. They're also aging, so I need to go back in, but every day I'm I'm seeing what's driving traffic. I'm making sure that those posts are still good. I'm updating

25:03photos when I need to. Um so that is like still kind of at the core of what I'm doing. Um I'll say that that my email list has become like very very very valuable to me and I've been growing that since 2014, but it was always kind of like okay, I'm going to do a newsletter this week cuz I have so many new posts. It was just kind of always like something I had to do, but now it's really really important. Like my email list is

25:33I'm directly um speaking to my audience. I'm sending them to the post that maybe I've just updated. Um I'm kind of hoping that they don't remember that the blog post you know, maybe they saw it a year ago or three years ago. I doubt that they do. Um but I've also um done something with my email list where I've created like an evergreen automated

26:04email thing. So I do it in Mailchimp. I think you could do this in almost any email server, but I have set it up so like my audience will get an email from me about every two to three days that just goes like automatically. And I've been try I've been trying to be um careful about maybe inserting some Amazon links now because apparently that changed in the last few years where you can put Amazon affiliate links in an email as long as like I always make sure to put that affiliate disclosure in the email and then I think Amazon says like as long as somebody signed up for the

26:49email then you're allowed to send them an Amazon link. That is something that's fairly new, so I'm going back to that evergreen list and like trying to add those affiliate links when I can because the truth is like our audiences like they're really interested in what we're using. Um so it's not just about making money, it's actually offering uh value to the audience to tell them specifically exactly what product you're using and stuff like that. So that definitely has proven to be a nice source of traffic for me and then a little bit of

27:25affiliate income. Uh something else that is working is is uh on the affiliate side, so more of like a diversification strategy for me is so I've worked with Amazon forever, but I have found that like having a few private working with a few private companies for specifically for affiliate, so selling products that are very relevant to my audience, the um affiliate payouts are much higher than Amazon, so it's I don't know, it could

28:00be like 20% or higher. Um that's something that has worked for me and is working for me. So that's something to think about and that is not necessarily going through like the ShareASale or those companies where you find affiliates. This is working directly one-on-one with the company. They usually have like an affiliate manager and so they're always having sales and so we it takes a little bit of work on my end um to keep like promoting those sales like

28:33sometimes it's like, okay, too much. Like my audience doesn't want a sale every single week for this product, but maybe, you know, once a month I'm pushing out, oh, and this company's having a sale and this is how I use it, that kind of thing. Talk about on your email side of things um how you're structuring what you send out and when. Uh a lot of people take a blast approach, you know, and and that would be where they sit down, they write out an email and they send it to their list. Other people set up a lot of automations, they have workflows, you join a workflow. Some people get really

29:02sophisticated where they send different emails to different segments or or or people that uh are more engaged and stuff. Um where are you at with how you're approaching that email? So you talked about how important it is going forward and we've heard that from other guests. Um but how detailed are you getting in it? Yeah, I would say I'm getting very

29:19detailed with my email list. So I do have several niches for my site or I guess you would say like interest um clusters. So for instance, because it's like a new food site, I have uh Instant Pot cuz that's like a very specific that's a pressure cooker, it's like a very specific appliance and when people kind of go down that rabbit hole, they want they want all Instant pot recipes. And so, that is one content cluster, I guess. So, I have it as a tag

29:53in Mailchimp. Um I have some other ones like sugar-free. People were interested in like sugar-free recipes. A couple things like that, and I actually have separate automations for those separate tags. And I even have like separate pop-ups. Uh so, I think the way Mailchimp has it is you can tie a tag to a category um

30:25on your website. So, if a if somebody is on a certain blog post that falls within a certain category, they'll get a separate pop-up. Um and actually have that through Mediavine, not through Mailchimp. Mail But then Mediavine speaks with Mailchimp. So, it does get a little bit technical, but once you get it set up, um it just runs really smoothly. You know your readers are getting the topics

30:52that they're interested in. Um so, what I do is I have these separate automations based on those like four or five separate topics. And then I will send an email blast like once a week to the whole entire list. Yeah. Um because I assume like it's a recipe site, so they're all kind of interested. And then I'll get unsubscribes like if I have I don't know like too many dessert recipes in my blast, I'll see some unsubscribes from like the sugar-free

31:19people, and they'll be like, "Oops." Like they didn't really want that. They didn't want a whole bunch of dessert recipes. But it's okay. Um you know, I get unsubscribes with every blast, but that's okay. Um so, I don't worry about that. And then it'll make up for the amount of traffic that I'll get from that blast email. So, I'm very very involved with my email list. So, that's probably something that I'm touching or you know, I'm writing, I'm

31:47refining, I would say on a daily basis. Social media, where is that coming into play for you? Um there's a lot of opportunity there, a lot of work there. Yeah. Um so, a lot of has a lot has changed with that as well. And it's interesting. Just in the spring of 2026, uh Mediavine has um allowed for the uploading of vertical short-form video to be monetized uh through Mediavine. So, that's been something that has um changed, and then probably a lot of people have noticed if you Google something now, you will see a

32:32lot of short-form videos. Now, they they're usually showing them from like TikTok or YouTube. The problem is still with these short-form videos, if you upload them on the native site, so like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, um Facebook, I think Facebook you can put a link, but on those other social media sites you cannot put a

32:59link. Um so, then if your short short short-form video is showing up on Google, like great, maybe you'll get some follows, but you won't necessarily get traffic to your website. But like I said, now you can take those short-form and upload them on Mediavine. I'm not sure if Raptive has the same ability yet because I'm with Mediavine,

33:23so I know that one. Um but what I've been doing is uploading those short-form videos to Mediavine, then inserting them in the relevant blog post. And so, I will get some revenue if people land on my site. And then I also find that there is some benefit. Like I I don't know why. Google loves me for this beet juice recipe. So, if I do any kind of short short-form video for beet juice, it's going to show up on the front page of Google. And then it seems to benefit, even though it's not linked. If I be linked on the back end on my website, but there's not an actual link in that

34:04short-form video, but somehow Google is like it it makes my beet juice blog post do better when a a short-form video. So, maybe it's on a different topic. Like um I'll do a video like my juice recipes do really well. So, even if the blog post isn't doing really well, and I do a short short-form video, let's say on Instagram, it'll

34:32show up on the front page of Google. And then the the blog post will sometimes it feels like it gets a lift. Um so, it's almost like how web stories were acting for me. Um that's what I was going to say. It sounds like how you described web stories a couple years ago. Yeah, so um as far as social media goes, like I pretty much ignored social media. Not ignored it. I mean, I had it. I was playing around with like long-form video

35:03on YouTube, and I had some success. And then it would benefit my blog post. But um the short-form video really seems to be outpacing long-form video. Now, it's a lot easier to make. You You want to keep it like 30 seconds to a minute. I think you need a minimum of 30 seconds to get paid on um Facebook, or I'm not sure about YouTube Shorts. They really don't monetize that

35:31well. But if I'm getting a benefit like on the blog side or the SEO side, and then additionally, it's offering some of that authenticity that I'm trying to offer my audience, and it's showing that I'm a real person. Cuz I do try to put my face on my videos. Like it it seems like it's all it's all

35:53kind of benefiting each other. So, I'm not opposed to doing the videos. Like before like I said, like I was just focused on content. Just blog blog post content. It didn't make sense for me to do anything else. At this point, the videos are it's kind of making sense to do some videos. I'm trying to be strategic strategic about it. Like it can be tempting if I'm in my kitchen, I'm just happening to be making something. It can be be tempting for me to make a video, but I am trying to be strategic. Okay, like if I'm going to shoot a video, like let's try to attach it to a recipe post

36:33that already exists on my site. And so, then I can try to link them together, and then that blog post will get lifted. Trying to be a little bit more strategic about that. What does a day in the life look like now? Because, you know, and we we've talked about all the different stuff that you've tried, all the stuff that you're seeing some lift with. Um I appreciate your perspective. I'll I'll call I'll pause and call it out that part of the reason this whole process is so painful is because of the incredible highs you'd experience a couple years ago. And to many, uh you know, 5 6,000 dollars a month,

37:15200,000 page views, that's still a a winning website. But when you're coming on the heels of a million page views, it's just it's incredibly painful. But it is the perspective is key. You are still doing things that are working. What does a day in the life look like as you balance the stuff to try, the stuff that is working, the stuff that you're

37:34still doing but not doing as much of? I'm just curious how you spend your time these days. So, what I'm doing now is um it's a lot slower pace, and it's a lot more authentic. Um I have a lot better balance in my life. So, I've let go of pretty much every single sub con- contractor. Um which that in and of itself was incredibly difficult because I felt like I had like this amazing team that I had put together. And um I mean, they didn't probably didn't know that they were part of a team, but from my perspective, I had like this really great people that I

38:09had vetted, and you know, we were it was it was all like working really well. Um but at this point, it's definitely much more sustainable. Um I kind of see I'm starting to see a future where my site is like it's actually more of like what my goal was with my site, which is to offer

38:33like real value. Um each each blog post is now written by me, where for a long time I I didn't write a blog post for probably 5 years. Um now I'm you know, I'm writing everything. And uh nothing is really based on keyword research anymore. It's just more about like what I can offer. Um and I'm just kind of I guess hoping that um that there's like a monetization

39:09value in like that authenticity. Um I think there is. I don't think I think that there's going to be like a little bit of a veering away of everything AI. Um so, we'll have to see. I mean, the story like continues to unfold. And like you said, I'm really grateful that I still have the 200,000 page views a month, and um I think it's also been really interesting in the social media side because that's where you get like the more authentic interactions, like people messaging you, um and like sharing what their real

39:44struggles are. Um, and so I'm kind of viewing it as like when I look at my social media and like the stuff that I produce for my social media, I'm speaking directly to that person. And where I kind of lost that with my blog, and so I'm kind of getting back to that with my website as well as like speaking directly to that actual

40:04reader. Um, so yeah, day-to-day is um working on the website from the SEO stuff. It's formulating emails, video has really become a huge part of my day-to-day. So I'd say like kind of split a third, a third, a third, you know. Blog, SEO work, just technical stuff, email work, and video stuff. You know, I appreciate you coming on and sharing a lot of the raw stuff. And we

40:35talked about this before we hit record. Um, we try our hardest on this podcast every week to bring you very tactical, very in the weeds, very granular level approach to something that's winning, whether it's um you know, in SEO, in Pinterest, in YouTube, perhaps on a different platform, perhaps with a SaaS business. And we try to give you those those tools, right? So you can you can build your business, you can learn from other people's successes, you can maybe borrow an idea that someone used here and use

41:04it over here. At the same time, it's really good to pause as this podcast has been around for 15 years now and kind of understand the cycles that the various industries that we're a part of in touch and go through and stuff. So um I appreciate you coming on, kind of having a heart for the listener, um and wanting to share some of the downs even though it can be difficult to talk through or maybe from a high level not not be as comfortable, but um you know, I appreciate that. And I I I do think a lot of people can learn and get value out of some of the things you've tried

41:32that people are on people's minds, but also some of the places you're going. It's interesting to hear you talk about it. I'll just sum it up with this like you're still focusing on building a good website and you're adding in social media, you're adding in video, and you're adding in email to a higher and higher degree. It sounds like you're at

41:47the thresholds of building a brand. Which to your point was kind of what we all have tried to do, but along the way we find things that work and they work well and we we lean on them and that's not bad, but you know, it's also exposing the downsides of it. And I think that that's the big juxtaposition that for me this whole interview has gone back to is the idea of building a brand, but the idea of having to also make money and pay your bills along the way and make strategic decisions about where the ROI is. And there's tension

42:15there. Yeah, that I think that's a really good point. And I think also that um just like with so many things changing and like so much uh concern about how AI is changing this landscape, the idea that we can still like build really good like content um niche-based websites. Um I'm really hopeful that there's a future in it. I really think that there is. Um I just think like we're going to have to kind of like tweak it a little bit and I think like at the heart of that is like this authenticity and like this humanness of us connecting with each other like the

42:55way that an AI can't do. Well, Carrie, I appreciate you coming on. I will link in the show notes to your previous episode. Um and uh people can listen if they want. There's lots changed as you outlined. Folks, don't follow the Web Story advice. Um but it's a good it was a great interview a couple of years ago. Um and then obviously you are at

43:17cleaneatingkitchen.com. Um any other places that people can connect with you? I would say Instagram is where I'm kind of testing things out if you want to see what I'm doing as far as short-form video and that's uh cleaneatingcarrie, c a r r i e. And then also in my last interview, I had mentioned that I really enjoyed venturing other bloggers. And I got a lot of emails from people and I really enjoyed each of those interactions. I mean, obviously like at that last interview, I was like, "No, I'm making this kind of money." And people were like, "Tell me, how can I make that kind of money?" So this

43:55interview is a little I'm in a little bit of a different situation, but I would still be happy to, you know, if somebody's starting out and wants me to look at their site or give them some of my input, I'm happy to do that and I have a contact page on my website and I do respond to every email I get. So it might take me like a day or two, but I will respond and I I really love connecting with other um content

44:21creators. Oh, that's awesome. That's great. Well, Carrie, thanks for coming back on. Um I wish you continued success. I say continued success because you've had success um throughout the years. You've been doing this for a long time and you've been around long enough to see that you know, stuff comes and stuff come stuff comes and goes, but uh there's so many things you're doing right now that have those threads of the same building. Uh so thanks for coming

44:45on and good luck. Thank you.