RE: Why I Stopped “Creating Content” — Unattributed

RE: Why I Stopped “Creating Content”<br>July 22, 2026 A city full of millions of people living their lives. Photo: CC-0

Michael Lynch wrote an excellent and thought-provoking article yesterday titled Why I Stopped “Creating Content”. In this article he discusses a lot of the mentality that motivates the mainstream web these days which is worth discussing a bit more.

Industry Speak

I started encountering a lot of the industry speak when I found my way into the bowels of the SEO industry some years back. At the time I just accepted that terms like “funnel,” “conversion,” “landing page,” “content,” and “traffic” had meaning. After all, these were the people that were making a lot of money, and getting a lot of eyes on their websites, right?

Turns out, no, they weren't. I've known a few people who have been engaged in the drop-shipping industry for a while now. Basically, they use as many tricks of technology and marketing as possible in order to sell (often dubious) products at a substantial markup for profitability. Basically a “passive income” type of scheme. These are the kind of people that think of customers as “traffic”. They don't care about their customers, they are only interested in chasing the dollars, pounds, or whatever currency…

When my eyes were truly opened about what the SEO world was really about, I was completely repulsed. I found the whole thing repugnant. And, while I've never mentioned it before, this was another black mark on Google's reputation as far as I was concerned. Why Google? Because they enable this industry. They actively engage with SEO marketers to make certain they understand the changes being made to their search engine.

Why would they do this? While I never had the time to dig into it deeper, I believe Google is profiting from SEO marketers. And, I believe that it's significantly profitable for Google. Why? If it wasn't profitable, why would Google directly engage with these marketers?

The thing I found disgusting about this is: Google has been actively distorting search results for a long time. If some SEO marketer's page can outrank bad review(s) of the same product, that likely means the SEO marketer had an upper-hand over the reviewer. At least that is what I keep seeing.

The Rise of Influencers

I don't know if anyone will be surprised reading this, but the people doing “influencer” marketing are just a subset of the SEO marketing crowd. As social media started becoming more influential, it was apparent to many of the SEO marketers that Google didn't represent the whole market anymore. So, they turned to “creators” to market their garbage.

What I think many don't realize is that when your favorite YouTuber, Instagram-er, (or whatever platform) takes a sponsorship they are subject to the same measurements SEO marketers use. They are seen as a “funnel” to “drive traffic.” The result is “conversion” to a “customer.” Many times their agreements depend on the “conversion rate” of their audience. Basically, it pulls you out of your role as an audience member, and makes you into a commoditize-able asset.

But who can blame the people who are creating the things you watch? They need some way to make money in order to keep making things for their audience. And that's what these marketers are preying on. They are living on the willingness of a person to turn their audience into “traffic” fodder.

Getting off the Roller Coaster

This entire thing is a big roller coaster. Once you are on it, it's hard to see where or when the ride is going to end. And I took a long ride on the SEO coaster, but I managed to jump off it a few years back. I had been trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life during the pandemic. Actually, I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn't know how I was going to do it.

The answer, of course, was writing. I t was the thing I've wanted to dedicate myself to since College. However, over the past few years I have been confronted with an old insecurity: would anyone be interested? It's the age-old question that confronts every writer: who is your audience. When you start any project, especially a creative endeavor, you have to wonder if there is any appeal to that project. So, of course, I started writing again. First with this very blog, and then I started a niche blog. The idea was to see if there was any interest. No sales, no marketing, just me writing.

And, of course, they failed. Why, I wondered? I found several reasons. First was the demotivation provided by WordPress. But, I didn't recognize that at the time. Instead, I turned to the SEO articles I had stashed away. I quickly found I was doing X wrong and Y wrong. I would never generate “traffic” unless I did Z instead.

This was when the proverbial light bulb went off in my mind. SEO was doing precisely the wrong thing. I was looking for answers from marketers. I was looking to generate numbers instead of considering the value of my...