I always enjoy writing these self-referential posts at the end of the year. Sometimes, I rant; other times, I just recap my journeys. Actually, those annual reviews are probably the only articles I publish that are destined for myself. In every other blog post, I focus exclusively on helping readers find information for their upcoming travels. The 2024 year review, though, falls somewhere in between.
Last year’s recap was all about the joy of being freely on the road again. Although it never really finished, the pandemic started feeling like a distant nightmare. However, this year, I decided to slow down. This affected the number of posts on the blog –I wrote more on the anniversary post– and how often I traveled. The decision was not easy, and several things influenced it.
I felt this decision had a deeper meaning. At the end of the day, I had one question on my mind: Do we still need blogs?
2024 Year Review: Do we still need blogs?
I have been a writer my entire adult life: I wrote novels, short stories, travel reports, and essays. The travel blog you’ve been reading for over six years is also among the things I love doing. Therefore, the reply is probably obvious: yes, we still need blogs.
However, I didn’t just want to reply as a writer; I also wanted to answer as a reader. Moreover, I wanted to share my opinion as an individual, as a tiny part of society, and as someone who spends daily time on the Internet.
My opinion as a writer
I have already replied to that, I guess. For writers, a blog is a creative outlet. Or, to be more precise, one more creative outlet. Running a blog -the niche is irrelevant- means that you can keep your hand warm in writing and experiment more freely. One thing that we often forget is how important creative freedom is.
A book has its rules, and an essay, too. Let alone, of course, if somebody asks you for an article on a specific topic. Sometimes, the guidelines are strict. But on a blog, writers feel like they are on a one-man show: you are the writer, the publisher, the editor, and the marketeer. And most times, the best critic of your work.
Sharing your articles also means something equally important: exposure. Most writers don’t have the reach they daydream of. It is highly unlikely that a blog will offer tremendous exposure. But every tiny bit counts, and when writing without guidelines, you can definitely provide the readers with different styles of writing.
So, yes, as writers, we still need blogs. We can present ourselves, share our thoughts, and help entertain our readers. Helping or entertaining others has been a noble activity in every moment in history. It doesn’t matter if it’s underpaid or not paid at all. Writers are small societal pillars, so they need a creative outlet where they can truly be themselves.
My opinion as a reader
I can only judge this based on how I explore the Internet daily. Honestly, I spent a good part of my day online. Most of the time, this is due to work, but you’ll often see me online whenever I don’t meet people in real life or reading.
The internet primarily tries to satisfy user intent. It doesn’t matter what that intent is: sometimes I search for information, other times I want to read something—and other times I just procrastinate.
How often do I visit blogs? Well, I can easily say that at least half of my online time is spent on blogs. They satisfy me more than other kinds of websites. That’s because I need the personal touch on a story or informational material that news websites don’t offer me. It’s the point of view that matters. Please, please, please, don’t misunderstand me: I don’t reject traditional news sites. They are of great value, and they serve a good purpose.
However, the blogs contain sentiments and personal points of view. Although they might not be as lucrative as books or publications, they often fill a gap: the personalized experience. And that’s what makes me return again and again to blogs about everything: travel, sports, cinema, literature. The list is really endless.
As an online reader, I couldn’t live without blogs. Not all of them are probably well-written, nor each one stays true to its audience. But that’s part of the game, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that it’s hard to keep on track.
However, the existence of a blogging industry means that there are diamonds to discover, and having a vast number of blogs out there is a necessity for the best ones to shine.
My opinion as a member of society
I said yes as a writer and reader. So, as you can imagine, I will also say yes in this third part of the 2024 year review and my thoughts on blogging. However, here’s an ugly truth that we need to discuss: Why have blogs been harder to discover lately?
Over the last couple of months, Google and other search engines have redesigned and updated their algorithms. Within weeks, small publishers were sacrificed in favor of the big players. This is not a conspiracy theory. Major news outlets have written about it; for example, you can read an article by Verge here.
Ask every blogger out there about their website traffic, and the answer is the same: it dropped significantly.
What happened?
Bloggers could usually make a small amount of money from their writing. No, most bloggers will never make a living out of blogging. But they could pay for some costs like hosting the website, buying a new camera, and things you need to carry on publishing content. This small part of the pie was significantly reduced or zeroed.
Not earning money from the blog wasn’t what made me slow down. But writing content that would never be discovered is enough reason to hold you back. No one works to work hard on something to see it collapse. And the more you do, the more it collapses. Sorry, this is unacceptable.
Travel blogging might seem fun. It is, but it’s also a lot of work. A weeklong stay somewhere might create awesome memories. But what follows are months of struggle to transcribe these experiences into words, work on your photos, and share the best information. Working for months on something and remaining undiscovered is zero fun.
I have never chased money in my life. I can live with the very basics. But when you work and play by the book, I’m sorry, but there are specific things I demand.
Society needs the small publishers, period
Society means pluralism. The more voices you have, the better. Burying small publishers removes thousands of voices from public discussions. I can’t see any single point that this aspect is fruitful and positive. Reducing unhelpful content in the search results is one thing, but wiping out every small publisher is lame.
And this goes beyond earning money. It’s about having a pluralistic Internet, where voices are heard and judged for their quality or lack thereof. Sorry, this is completely unacceptable, and you are shaping a weird landscape, especially when seeing it through the prism of the irrationality of the modern world. The Internet was never perfectly working, but this is a reason to make it better, not worse.
2024 Year Review: The places I visited
I usually dedicate much larger sections to the places I travel. But today, I wanted to discuss something that affects this blog and all the blogs you read. I might write a different recap next year. But in the 2024 year review, I preferred to talk about some things I felt you needed to know.
Therefore, I will only provide some information about the three new places I visited this year. Under each category, you will find the blog posts I wrote and the ones I plan to publish in the future.
Copenhagen, Denmark
In March, I revisited Copenhagen. It wasn’t my first time there as a traveler, but it was my first as a blogger. Although it was still cold, the capital of Denmark is always a fantastic destination. Yes, it’s pricey compared to most European countries, but its charm and delicious food again fascinated me.
You can find my Copenhagen articles here.
I highly recommend reading my Copenhagen travel guide and facts about Nyhavn, the city’s beautiful port.
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Slovenia’s capital has been on my radar for a long time. On my weeklong journey there, I had the opportunity to discover Ljubljana’s beauty and its layers. I was genuinely impressed. Slovenia is a small country, so you can see the best of it if you stay at least a week.
You can see my Slovenia posts here.
I encourage you to read my article about the architect Joze Plecnic and the Ljubljana travel guide to find the best places to see.
Basque Country, Spain
Lastly, in 2024, I finally visited the Basque Country in Spain. What a place! I was so fascinated by it that I am still processing everything. The first articles are already on the blog, and more will come in the first half of 2025. I highly recommend visiting this beautiful area and spending some days close to the Atlantic Ocean.
You can find all my articles about the Basque Country here.
And if you are a football fan, check out my VIP experience at the San Mames Stadium, the home ground of the legendary Athletic Club.
Two extra articles
Before finishing this article, I want to point you to two more articles. These are not about new places; I have been to both of them previously. But they are important to me, and I feel like sharing them.
In 2024, I thought I wouldn’t write a letter to Barbara. And this would have been a pity for the blog’s identity. But after visiting Crete, my travel writing lust got back. I wrote a travelogue about an old World War II story and how I traced it down during my days on the island. You can read my Crete travelogue here.
I also revisited the Draiflessen Collection in Mettingen, Germany. This off-the-radar contemporary art museum hosts fantastic exhibitions. This time, I visited it on the occasion of the Language/Text/Image exhibition. It was probably the best exhibition I’ve seen this year. I wrote an article about this fantastic art exhibition here. Check it out.
Here’s to a great 2025!
That’s it with my 2024 year review. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you for being part of the Letters to Barbara for one more year. It means the world to me as a writer, small publisher, and individual.
From my side, I promise to keep the same quality on this blog and share free guides and travel impressions from the places I visit. During the first half of the year, I plan to update all my travel guides to reflect accurately the current conditions in the places you want to visit. And, of course, I will share my future journeys -some of them are super exciting!
Here’s to a great 2025!
You can read all my annual recaps here.
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Last Updated on December 21, 2024 by George Pavlopoulos
George, people still read blogs but travel related posts seem to be way over saturated. For instance, I have 10 posts about Bali. Many of them haven’t even got over 100 views. One of them about the best beaches in Bali has had a few thousand views, but with all the effort that has gone into all of these posts, it’s probably been a huge waste of time. Then I’ll do some bizarre post about interesting facts about Nancy Kovack, the actress who starred as Medea in the Jason and the Argonauts (1963) movie and get 1000 views. Like who is searching for this stuff? I did a review on the recent KAOS TV series and got 1000 views (and it seems to be growing). A movie review about Thor: Love and Thunder, I just saw that it has now reached 15,000 views. Many of my other movie related posts have 20-40 thousand views. One of my top posts has over 100,000 views and I would never have predicted that one being so popular. People are searching for stuff and you never really know which post will take off. For instance, I have reviewed a large number of Greek mythology comics and graphic novels. Most get hardly any traffic. But a few of them have over a thousand views. I could never have predicted which reviews would be most popular. Our Greek lessons are doing quite well. The top lesson is showing close to 15,000 views now, and many of the others are doing great as well. The problem with content creation is not being able to do it fast enough. You will always get more traffic with more content, but that’s the hard part. I find one post a week is about my maximum output. But very occasionally I can do two posts in one week, but I can’t keep it up, as I start to feel burnout taking hold.
Keep blogging George and keep experimenting. I have noticed you visit a lot of museums and art galleries. Good posts that have worked for me include posts like 10 Best Paintings to See in … Museum. These kind of posts (starting with a number) really work, especially if you can find some unique angle to the post.
Hope you have a great Christmas with your family and friends, George, and wishing you all the best for the new year in 2025.
Hey John!
I know that (unfortunately) travel guides seem saturated. Yet, till the beginning of 2024, I could see quite some traffic to most of them. My main complaint is how a blog post assumed until March 2024 as helpful became completely unhelpful overnight. I had loads of posts making 1,500-2,000 views per month (or even more), and nowadays, they have disappeared from the Internet. These posts made money for Google via ads (and I took a tiny cut), and people booked tours and services via them because of the first-hand experience.
I don’t do heavy affiliate marketing; I inform the readers at the beginning of the article whenever there’s even just one affiliate link in the text, and I place the ads manually because I don’t want to interrupt the user experience. Assumingly, Google said that they might “penalize” individual pages, but this seems site-wide in most cases. Articles like the one about Ancient Corinth drove traffic to the blog for ages, but nowadays, they see just a few clicks. Moreover, (literally) thousands of people wrote to me about various guides and how they helped them travel better. The Alentejo guide, the Malta without a car, and the Tuscany road trip guide drove traffic to the blog. Then, one day, everything became unhelpful.
You are right about blogging more than once per week. Twice per week was the most I could make -exactly like you mentioned. We are one-person businesses, though, and honestly, if you don’t create content via AI, I can’t see how one can contribute something helpful to the Internet when blogging almost daily.
The art posts used to work well. Yet, on this travel blog, I never focused on producing content based on what works and what doesn’t. I always wanted to offer value to the readers, share my experiences, help them travel better, and enjoy the writing. For example, the travelogues (the Letters) are the posts I enjoy writing the most; however, they never worked that well in terms of traffic. But I love writing them anyway.
I won’t stop blogging; it’s a fantastic creative outlet and a thing that I love. I’ll tell you what I often say to Barbara: I enjoy writing on this travel blog more than I enjoyed writing any of my books. I mean it 101%. It gives me immense pleasure.
However, I have to be honest with you and the readers: blogging is time-consuming and means lots of expenses. I paid for my journeys and never went on a free trip because I wanted to share honest opinions, not biased ones. It will be decided by itself to blog less as time goes by, and this will be a pragmatic decision: no income, no visibility, no traffic, no growth. As a blogger, I’m here for creating content and helping people. Subsequently, this means that the hard work I or you, or every other honest blogger out there, is for this reason -not for training the LLMs of various companies for free. Companies have the right to change their business models whenever they want; however, we have the right to do the same on a smaller scale.
I wish you and your family all the best for 2025 with happiness, health, and personal success! And you should also keep on blogging!
George
George, I remember reading some of those posts – they were fantastic! I did a Google search for Tuscany road trip guide and your Alentejo guide, but could not find them anywhere in the first ten pages unless I missed them. I did a Google search for Malta without a car and you came up on page 2 in the second to top position. I think you need to act on the Malta guide asap. You need to get back on page one and it shouldn’t be that hard to do. Someone has probably recently beaten you by looking at your guide and then throwing in some extra content into their own blog post with some extra key words in order to outrank you. Not sure what you can do about the other two blog posts. I did find heaps of Tuscany road trip guides from other travel bloggers. Since these posts were giving you good traffic, you should really look to see how yours compares with some of the travel bloggers who are currently on page 1 and page 2 of Google. Then do some changes. It’s probably worth your time to spend a week or two (or even three) just focussing on these travel guides, adding more info and key words (based on what the high ranking posts contain), so that you can hopefully get back to where you were traffic wise, at least for these three great travel guides.
One thing is for certain, there is heaps of competition. I’ll keep on blogging as well and see where it takes me. Got a lot of greek mythology comics and graphic novels to review. I think I have the biggest collection in the world now – lol.
Hey John,
The thing is that I update these travel guides (and most of the articles) twice or more per year. I always want them to be up-to-date, and I cross-check data to reflect current pages. I also add new content (like paragraphs or even sections). Nothing worked so far. Google took a step further last month in their summit and claimed there’s nothing wrong with the content created and that the problem derives from them. What does this mean? Go figure…
I’m currently evaluating content and thinking of extra strategies. I won’t abandon the blog, that’s for sure. The issue seems to heavily affect blogs, especially the travel blogging industry. Clients I work for are unaffected and see good results from optimization. Apparently, something is going on with affiliate marketing…Businesses that offer their own products and services continue to thrive.
John, your Greek mythology posts and everything around them are treasures. You should continue expanding these sections; you have created a really fantastic niche! I’m looking forward to your upcoming posts 🙂
Merry Xmas!
George