Another media channel announced their closure and shift in business strategy today, with an announcement that fit emerging patterns.
There’s a fine line between transparency and oversharing. “Nobody wants to see how the sausage is made,” and yet this is such a complex industry that there should be windows into how things work.
Just to warn you, this is a longer post with a couple of related discussions smashed into one. It was time for a check-in.
Everything has changed, many times now, as this is the nature of the internet.
The rise of smartphones changed how people consume internet content. Social media compounded things.
A few years ago, AI scrapers started to harvest information. Blocking them didn’t help, because then they would just harvest content from RSS aggregators and others that scraped content.
Last Spring Google announced “a new era for AI Search.”
Search traffic and click-throughs have plummeted. AI agent traffic keeps climbing.
AI services harvest, aggregate, and regurgitate content – information, opinions, insights – and give nothing back to the sources.
Google has started filling their “Discover” news feed with more content from YouTube and social media, with web channels seemingly given diminishing attention.
Media channels everywhere are struggling. Large corporate media conglomerates have been buying up sponsored placements to get their content in front of more eyeballs on Google Discover news feeds.
I have even seen sponsored listings for sponsored posts.
They’re paying Google to get people to read articles. In some cases, they’re just paying people to click through to Amazon affiliate shopping pages.
There are pros and cons to how things have evolved.
On one hand, it’s good to be able to search for the the Superbowl start time and not have to scroll through 4 paragraphs of random history that does nothing but artificially boost time-on-page metrics.
On the other hand, media is dying out. Written journalism has all but collapsed.
There’s a widespread sense of desperation.
Just about every magazine and media channel is now engaged in tool deal content. They are terrible at it. I can no longer give them the benefit of the doubt, and concluded it’s intentional. I thought incompetence was bad – no, Milwaukee’s Kevlar scissors are not made from the stuff – but I am no longer astounded about the level of misinformation and deception I see on a daily basis.
I can’t even tell if half the articles that are hitting my Google news and Discovery feed were written by inept product shopping “experts” or lower-end generative AI services.
The content creator posted today that they’re shutting down their blog, replacing it with their online supply store, which I guess has done well due to their popularity on other platforms such as YouTube.
It’s not just web content creators that are facing challenges. I’ve seen YouTubers racing to grow on Instagram, and TikTokkers and Instagram influencers struggling to grow on YouTube.
Channel by channel, once-bright lights have dimmed, and more by the day are giving up, going on to do different things. That happens on occasion, but it’s happening a lot more now.
Everyone was at the mercy of “the algorithms,” and how it filtered the type of content audiences might and might not ever see, and now audience levels are dropping thanks to how AI coopts content.
Before all of this, I observed an increase in the number of people asking basic questions on Reddit. The increasing trend was not “help me find the answer,” but “tell me the answer.” AI search and AI agent services are great for that.
A lot of people don’t search anymore, they ask questions and expect a convenient answer. They don’t want to learn or even be taught, they just want to be told.
It barely even matters where the answers come from, or if they’re accurate. If the answer sounds confident, that’s good enough.
Convenient answers, much like stale and bitter-tasting coffee, are sought after and accepted. Let’s be real – for many people convenience is better than insights one has to dig for themselves.
I saw a post recently, about someone that uploaded a Word document into Claude, asking it how many words there were. In case you haven’t used Word in a while, it gives you a live word count at the bottom of the app.
I get stuck in different apps on occasion, even Word and Excel. When that happens, I’ll do a search until I find and understand the solution. But I guess who needs to search for an answer when you can have Claude or other AI services create a script or macro to solve all your document hurdles. Heck, why bother even trying – these services can automagically create entire documents and slide decks for you.
Is it raining right now? It’s often easier to look at one’s phone than to find the closest window or door.
There have been studies about how the use of AI impacts critical thinking. Things have changed and are changing further in ways that will have impact.
All of has has had me concerned, but mostly in a detached theoretical way. What will this mean? I don’t know, we’ll see.
I knew traffic numbers were declining, after Google’s “new era of AI” went live. At that point I also saw a sharp drop-off in hits from Chat GPT’s bot. Before that, I checked on a random day and clocked around 17,000 queries in 24 hours that led to 6 or 7 referred visits.
There were nearly 50,000 bot content retrievals today. That sounds about right for the number of visits ToolGuyd could expect to get on any given day in early October. The day isn’t over, but I can tell you there’s no “typical” anymore.
These services grab my images, regurgitate what I write, and send nothing in return.
I checked metrics for other media publications using public tools, and they’re not good either. I can see why some have resorted to paying for article views.
Can you imagine that? Paying Google so that they put your reviews in front of more some people. It doesn’t seem sustainable, but that’s been the business model on social media platforms for a while, where you’re expected to pay to reach your followers or subscribers.
I’m not yet sure what this will mean.
I have an enormous amount of fun every holiday season. I love finding tool deals, analyzing them, and sharing them. Shopping can help activate your brain’s reward system and give you a surge of dopamine. Finding money-saving bargains can do the same. Years ago, I learned that shopping for others can be almost as fun as shopping for myself.
It’s the thrill of the hunt, and thrill of saving money for other people, because there’s only so many deals I can get in on myself.
Most people don’t buy tools regularly, and so they enter the holiday season clueless. I love helping out.
The holiday season is exhausting, but I have so much fun. Fun doesn’t pay the bills.
From a business standpoint, we typically see an increase in traffic over the holiday season, which means greater ad revenue, and the increase in shopping also means greater affiliate revenue. A lot of shopping is done in stores, on other devices, or at a later time, but overall the holiday season means greater revenue.
Come January, I usually know where we stand for the year.
A good holiday season means I don’t have to focus much on courting advertisers, sponsorship, or other revenue-generating endeavors.
A lower performing holiday season means I cut back on ToolGuyd spending and then still not worry much about ad revenue.
ToolGuyd runs relatively lean when it comes to unnecessary expenses. For example, I haven’t fallen into the same trap as YouTubers who have a good year and then lease large shops they then have to figure out how to afford.
I do things the way I want to do. I don’t see that changing.
Entering this holiday season, traffic is down, revenue is down. I have 2.5 months to create certainty and assurances about 2027. I always enter the holiday season a little worried, but this year is different.
I tend to burn myself out every holiday season. Where might additional energy or momentum come from?
I can do more to appease algorithms, but I know I would hate every moment of it. I need to be able to sleep at night, which I don’t do enough of this time of year anyway.
Do I experiment in a way that doesn’t change any fundamentals?
ToolGuyd needs to be recognizable. It needs to be fun.
In today’s environment, content needs to be AI-proof. I have already been working towards that for Q4 and into 2027.
I actually have a lot of ideas for 2027. The holiday season typically pays for that – the types of testing, explorations, and features that don’t pay for themselves.
In some ways, all of these changes are refreshing. With AI services walling things off in a way and intercepting would-be visitors, it’s even more important to focus on everyday and returning readers.
Do I change how I do things, in hopes of appealing to visitors ToolGuyd might no longer be able to reach? That seems to be the popular move in publishing, but I don’t think it’s the right one.
Let’s see what my role models are doing. Sorry, that’s a bad joke about the state of journalism these days.
Consider Adafruit. They’re a USA-based electronics component manufacturer that sells direct and via other retailers and several massive distributors.
Look at their YouTube channel if you have a chance: https://www.youtube.com/@adafruit/videos.
They still share projects, how-to’s, and similar. It’s wholesome content. Enjoyable. Thumbnails that don’t horrify. They haven’t betrayed their audience for profit.
While it’s not a very relatable example, since their content supports their product business and content is my entire business, theirs is one of few channels that hasn’t bowed to “the algorithm.” They have few views, but they’re good views.
Some creators are diversifying and selling things. Linus Tech Tips now has a line of underwear.
This holiday season, I’ll be focused on learning and understanding the new status quo. There will be some experimentation, as usual.
I’m trying not to worry.
There are things that I can do or change *here*, and on other platforms where ToolGuyd publishes content.
I’ve been creating ToolGuyd content for around 17 years and 10 months now. I see paths forward, and strategies to explore. They’re fun, too.
Change is inevitable, and many situations are adaptable.
The difficulty lies in avoiding paths that takes one into an unwanted direction, runs into a dead-end, or worse drops you off a cliff.
One can adapt to survive, and fail. I like to think that such isn’t in the cards for ToolGuyd, but there are many cautionary tales about hubris.
A certain amount of concern can be healthy.
I typically center most of my holiday tool deals coverage around readers’ interests and needs, but there are some that I specifically put together for shoppers looking for help. Since AI will likely intercept a lot of that potential traffic, I might actually have some free time this year. See, there’s another silver lining, although I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince myself or others.
When I started ToolGuyd, I sought to fill informational needs that I considered unaddressed. I still strive to do that. At times, running ToolGuyd in the way I thought was fair and proper took away time and effort from other stories I wanted to explore. ToolGuyd was constructed for everyone who wanted to follow along with tool developments, and those who had specific timely questions.
Now with AI services answering all kinds of tool questions, confidently even if not accurately, maybe I can finally take opportunities to dig deeper. Maybe I can fit in more time for the types of content that AI can’t cannot easily strip away and regurgitate within seconds.
Change can sometimes be what you make of it, even if it’s involuntary.
Now, about the lead-in image, that’s a pile of wood from earlier this year. I also have cedar boards piled outside, and I need to get those cut and built into a planter before the holiday season completely monopolizes my attention. On another bright side, algorithms heavily favor “me” type of content these days, and so a post about whatever I end up doing with it will likely perform well.
