(This post was brought to you in partnership with Creative Fabrica. But all opinions remain our own, and we will never compromise the integrity of our relationship with our readers.)
I’ve been working as a full-time writer/editor/photographer since 1995, and Mary and I have been full-time independent publishers since we launched our first website, Green Global Travel, in 2010.
We’ve had an amazing journey, including freelancing for National Geographic, speaking at the New York Times Travel Show and Canada Media Marketplace, and leading workshops at TBEX conferences all around the world to teach up ‘n’ coming bloggers how to do what we do.
But in the last few years, tech companies like Google and Facebook have made it increasingly difficult for independent publishers like us to reach our audience and earn a decent living.
It’s forcing us (and many of our travel blogging friends) to make sweeping changes in our business models if we want to survive the most tumultuous period in the history of the Internet.
How Google is Killing the Blogging Industry
Search engines such as Google and social media channels like Facebook and Instagram are increasingly becoming “pay-to-play,” at prices small businesses cannot afford.
In short, if you don’t pay to advertise, they don’t want you making money from their platforms.
Ever worse, Google is using AI technology to take info from sites like ours, creating what they call a “Search Generative Experience” that seeks to answer most user questions by aggregating other websites’ intellectual property.
In simple terms, their system scans the info writers like ours (all of whom actually live in the Blue Ridge region) work so hard to research via first-hand experiences.
Then they mix it with info other indie publishers worked hard to create, and serve that stew of stolen info to people who use Google Search without crediting or linking back to the creators (all of whom depend on search traffic and ad revenue for their livelihoods).
We’ve been in the travel blogging industry for 14 years now, and most of the top travel bloggers in the world have lost 60-80% of their revenue to Google’s recent algorithm changes. Those numbers are getting worse by the day, leaving small businesses like ours decimated by corporate greed.
We rely on advertising revenue (which is based on how many people read our stories) to pay our writers, pay our bills, and feed our families. But Google clearly wants to keep the majority of the search traffic and ad revenue for themselves, at the expense of every other publisher in the business.
There are currently two high-profile lawsuits against Google. The first is an anti-trust case filed by the US Department of Justice, which NPR called “the biggest tech monopoly trial of the 21st century.”
The second was filed by Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the US, which alleges that Google has an online ad monopoly. According to CNN, the lawsuit states, “The result is dramatically less revenue for publishers and Google’s ad-tech rivals, while Google enjoys exorbitant monopoly profits.”
In the meantime, with tech giants making it harder and harder for people to find our free content, we have to find new ways to make a living. Fortunately, we’ve formulated a plan…
Designing Our Future
The last time Google algorithm changes negatively impacted the blogging industry en masse was at the end of 2019, when traffic and ad revenue for our Green Global Travel site was cut in half.
Like many other bloggers at the time, we were wracked with fear about how our business would survive, especially after the COVID pandemic shut down international travel completely.
But fortunately we had launched Blue Ridge Mountains Travel Guide on January 1, 2020. Once domestic travel restrictions were lifted, this site began to grow bigger than GGT had ever been.
From the beginning, we had a vision for ways that we could monetize BRMTG beyond the normal ad revenue and sponsored content model of most travel blogs.
But it took time to build up a devoted audience via social media (mainly our Facebook page and Exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains group) and our weekly newsletter.
And until this year, our traffic and ad revenue were so strong (and our push to create new content was so intense) that we didn’t have the time, energy, or financial need to expand our offerings.
But now that Google is limiting the visibility of our content in search and our ad revenue has taken a dramatic hit, we find ourselves fast-tracking the strategies we’ve kept on a shelf for 3+ years.
First up, we’re planning a series of Blue Ridge Mountains Travel Guidebooks, starting with a unique guide to exploring the Blue Ridge Parkway, the #1 most visited unit of the US National Park system.
Secondly, we’re launching a new business, Light Within Photography, which will offer portrait photo sessions in North Georgia and sell stunning landscape photos from throughout the Blue Ridge region.
We’re also hoping to unveil an extensive line of Blue Ridge Mountains-related merchandise, ranging from t-shirts and hats to photo calendars, jewelry, and more.
The problem we’re facing is that all of these things will need to be designed fairly quickly, and our budget is small due to the challenges our current businesses are facing.
But we recently discovered a new-to-us graphic design platform that offers us an easy and affordable way to bring our creative visions to life!
Designing With Creative Fabrica
The Amsterdam-based Creative Fabrica offers an array of online design tools that make it easier for designers of varying skill and experience levels to create artful projects.
From designing our own t-shirts and travel mugs to photo calendars and adult coloring books, just a few minutes of perusing their site gave us myriad ideas for our new business ventures.
Here’s an overview of a few of the site’s major features:
CLASSES: The CF community features an array of experienced crafters and designers, some of whom offer online craft courses that are free for “All Access” subscribers. Topics run the gamut from drawing and painting to embroidery, quilting, and more. There are also business-focused classes, such as “Canva 101,” “How to Design & Sell Print on Demand T-Shirts,” and “Getting Started on Etsy.”
FONTS: The platform offers 164,689 different fonts that subscribers can download for use in their design projects, whether online or in print. There are endless possibilities here, including brush, hand-drawn, and vector letterforms, plus extra character sets and embellishments for headers.
GRAPHICS & PNG IMAGES: Creative Fabrica has 8,642,053 different graphics that subscribers can download, including many with Print-On-Demand licenses available. There are icons, illustrations, vector graphics, and 3D images, all of which are available in a wide variety of themes. From coloring books and invitations to logos, postcards, craft patterns, and more, the depth and breadth of options here is truly mind-boggling!
SPARK: This cool collection of Creative Fabrica tools includes lots of different elements that are fun to play around with. There’s CF Spark Art for using simple descriptive text to create an image; CF Spark Crystalline to create eye-catching clip art for designing or die-cutting; CF Spark Sketch to craft detailed black and white pencil-like sketches; and CF Spark Coloring Pages makes it incredibly easy to create coloring books! These are just a few of the many tools under the “Spark” umbrella.
Creative Fabrica’s Studio Tool
One of the more impressive features Creative Fabrica offers their “All Access” subscribers is Studio, which seems sort of like their answer to Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.
In short, it’s sort of like an “everything AND the kitchen sink” toolkit for designers, with a comprehensive array of image editing tools.
There are file converters that can switch images from JPEG to PNG or SVG and back again. They have tools for adding text to images, applying creative filters, changing background colors, and enhancing images.
You can also use Studio to add watermarks, blur images and/or backgrounds, combine images, or crop and resize images to suit your needs.
One of our favorite features of Studio is the Transparent PNG tool, which allows designers to upload any image, then select any areas they want to be transparent.
You can do this manually, or by selecting specific colors, or by using the “Magic Wand” tool. Once you’re finished, it automatically removes the background, so you can overlay the image on top of other graphic elements.
This is a common trick you can use to create icons, logos, stickers, and other merchandise where you don’t want a visible background or border.
Best of all this Background Remover Tool is free, even if you’re not a Creative Fabrica subscriber.
But we’ve seen so many potential applications for all their various creative tools, we’ve decided to sign up for “All Access” membership, and cannot wait to share all of the awesome Blue Ridge Mountains-related merchandise we design! –by Bret Love
