I started doing SEO back in 2010, learned it quickly, and worked with some big clients. Also, created my own sites in many niches and ranked them easily. My sites were on the first page of Google for very hard keywords, I think only huge companies can secure those spots nowadays.
Finding new unsaturated niches was easy, there were lots of writers who competed and articles were very cheap.
Making money was very very easy. Adsense, affiliate programs, clients. I was making 30x more than regular people in my country. Life was good.
But I knew it will not last long. Things started to change, I would say, in 2016-2018. Big media sites started spying on me (yes, I discovered some very lucrative niches) and producing content on the same topic as me. My rankings started dropping from the first position to the second, then to the third etc. As soon as another big website published an article on the same topic as me, they outranked me.
At the same time buying links on some strong sites stopped working. I used to be a sponsor of some events and they linked to me in exchange. Those links worked well for a couple of years but then Google started ignoring them.
Sudden content demand turned writers into the elite. Articles I used to pay $2 in 2015 now cost $50-$80. It's not profitable for me anymore to start new websites. Not just because of content prices but because it's hard (I'd say impossible) to beat big media houses and big companies and outrank them.
Earlier I used to send a few dozen of emails to random potential clients, I introduced myself, and told them I can help with website ranking... A few of them always replied and accepted my offer.
Last year I sent lots of emails, but nobody replied.
For a year or more I'm making living doing other things. Are you guys still able to make lots of money by doing SEO? Did it really get harder or it was about me? Maybe I was not able to adapt or something? Is ranking websites lots harder today than it used to be? Can you get new clients easily as 5-10 years ago?
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