Hi webmasters, I remember a couple of comments from people here regarding selling their websites, but it was about business.
I mean something different.
My websites today = boring work and burden Right now when I write this, I feel nothing :) but very often when I think about my abandoned websites (and client websites), I feel... bored, tired, annoyed, sometimes even irritated. It's been too long since I wrote and uploaded any material, I used to be very consistent and eager to stay relevant, but not anymore. My first website started in 1998, and since then I created a couple more with pure hobby and passion spirit, it was fun to see them grow and provide income, but it's been a while since those online presences feel like a burden.
Little remaining traffic The online income still pay the hosting and domains, but it's a tiny fraction of what it used to be. It's ok, I'm not complaining about Adsense, advertising, or whatever... I fully understand I abandoned my websites, and naturally the traffic went down dramatically.
Factors influencing my indifference? - I honestly felt the hit of people becoming dumb and dumber. Writings like "the wall is white", used to mean exactly that, but it's been a while since clear stuff turns into obvious questions, -what color was the wall?- (hey dummy, it's in the title and also mentioned on 2 different paragraphs!)
- The constant changes on policies on things like Adsense: now you must comply with X, and then with Z, and now you must add a confirm dialog, and a warning, and cookie setting, and choose between A and B and C because some things apply if the website is hosted on X country, or Z region, and this will change in about a year... again.
- People stealing my content, especially my pictures... I worked very hard to travel to those destinations, all my content is original, it really hurts today, it... doesn't motivate me to keep doing this.
- Becoming the official source for thieves, and they won't even provide any attribution. I know, some of my stuff is very niche, but hey, it doesn't take long to see my content being stolen, you know when you just became a source of information, and I mean "a target".
- The lies and misunderstandings... because a lot of people will create FB fanpages with alike names just to try to steal some chances of confusing readers.
- Confusion: the content thieves who do such a poor job editing my content, they just place some attribution (thanks?) but the information is SO WRONG and twisted, it creates confusion on the readers thinking the source is cheap and wrong (so, no thanks).
For sometime tired of these things I moved to create wood products, and I felt happy, besides the sales turning into profit, the box wouldn't change, it's a final product. But the web... I'm a bit tired of things always changing, there is always something pending, be it language changes, security issues, upgrades, migrations, new bots, some traffic issue, etc.
It's been a while since I write or upload something. In theory, selling my websites... giving them away, or just closing the server for good should be ok, but it feels like such a big decision!
Have you been there?
