So wanted to give a couple quick updates about the site and some things that have been going on with it, as well as some updates. First off wanted to share my thoughts about using pictures and what I might do with the site moving forward. I have thought about making this a picture free site, aside from my own works. I know this will make it more boring but with the litigation that has been going on with copyrights lately it has make me think about it more then once.
I don’t want to get into the details but there are plenty of copyright troll lawyers who go around and send what essentially amount to ransom notes for works they don’t hold the copyright too. I’ve received a few of these for images that were copyright free. Also I recently found out that sites being bought by other sites (for example fotolia was bought by adobe) can invalidate their licensees. So a photo I bought from fotolia that’s now owned by adobe means I can be in violation of copyright by using it.
I don’t know how all of that works but do not want to get involved in legal battles. So I’ve removed all the images from fotolia on the site (majority of my first and second year articles). Next I use the site pixabay for my supposedly copyright free images but I’ve heard people getting sued by people putting up images on copyright free image sites that weren’t copyright free. Essentially means you can grab one of these photos and end up getting sued for its use. Granted I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice but it may be an option. I’ll see how things go.
The next topic I wanted to give a quick update on is site traffic. Site traffic has dropped from about 2,000 views a day to around 200. And this was long after I switched to a membership only site (which brought it from about 3.5 to 2k per day). I hate throwing the term banning or shadow banning around because people like to cry wolf about it but something drastically changed. I know Google and the like is cracking down on dissenting websites and know mine has been banned from more then a few places.
Essentially that means I make less and less from this website. Don’t worry, I’m not raising rates or quitting or anything like that, just laying out facts. I have no idea what to do in this situation other than keep writing and hope more people make the switch to search engines like Duckduckgo. Anyways just some announcements that I wanted to get out of the way and make you aware of. You’ll probably see less photos going forward and I’m sorry for that. I might just stick to nature photos on pixabay but who knows.
As for website traffic, I know my site isn’t something you’d bring up at the water cooler or whatever, but if you know someone who could use it maybe drop them a link, recommend them a book, or something. Any help is greatly appreciated. Hopefully things will get kicking at some point. What’s that old saying “Can’t keep a good man down?” I don’t know if I qualify as a good man but hopefully if I just keep writing things will change. Which I what I will do.
Weird times we live in but hope this site has helped with them. Thanks for reading.
P.S. As a side note I used to always make sure these announcements were at least 300 words to be indexed by Google but guess that doesn’t matter anymore.
