That $500 blog investment my brother talked me into backfired hard

My brother swore I needed a custom WordPress theme and premium hosting for my little hiking blog, said it would look professional. Dropped $500 on it in February 2023 and the site got 30 views total in 6 months, mostly from my own mom clicking around. Meanwhile my buddy just uses free Blogger and his posts about trails near Portland are getting picked up by search engines somehow. Anyone else get burned by someone's 'expert' advice that just turned into a money pit?

2 comments

2 Comments

carter.jennifer18d ago

The free Blogger thing is actually interesting though, did your buddy do anything special with it or just post normally? Idk maybe it's just me but I feel like people overcomplicate stuff with paid tools when the free ones can work just fine if you put the time in. What kind of stuff was your brother basing his advice on exactly, like had he actually run a successful blog himself or was he just repeating stuff he heard somewhere? Cause sometimes the people giving the "expert" advice haven't even done it themselves.

grace56518d ago

Got burned the same way last year. Paid some "social media guru" $400 to set up my Etsy shop ads and got maybe two sales from bots. Lesson learned - just use free tools and ask real people for advice instead of internet experts.