I remember back in 2013, when building content sites was just taking off and there were people who had been in the industry for a while, we created a Skype group where we discussed pressing matters.
Even back then, people were talking about foreign markets and how getting paid in dollars was better than in rubles. That everyone should expand into foreign markets, and so on.
I’ve been hearing this talk about ‘going global’ for a very long time, but only a handful of people actually made the leap.
I mentioned at the NaZapad conference that out of the 20–25 people in that group, I was the only one who expanded into foreign markets 🙂
The rest are doing other things.
I remember the era of Puzat and Smart, when content sites ruled and everyone was churning them out relentlessly. Webmasters chose to build sites for the Russian web back then, and they didn’t need traffic from Google. It was ENOUGH to SIMPLY set up an assembly line and insert keywords according to tech specs—sometimes even awkwardly and unnaturally.
In 2017, when the barrier to entry became rock-bottom and any homemaker who took a course could churn out sites just by clicking a few specific buttons, that’s when Baden-Baden arrived.
Even the name speaks for itself. Baden-Baden. Repetition of the exact same word.
What webmasters loved so much—inserting keywords according to specs and spamming them in text—stopped working like before. What’s more, site-wide penalties started hitting.
Since all the assembly lines were built around churning out more content rather than building backlink profiles, a complete collapse followed. There was no Google traffic, and Yandex slashed theirs.
For most webmasters, buying links meant throwing money at crowd marketing or Sape. As if someone else would figure out which links were better for you. And once again, we stumble over everyone doing the exact same thing. And once again, it reeks of spam.
There is no uniqueness in this, no real effort. What everyone does eventually becomes a dead-end model in the long run. Crowd links aren’t bad when placed individually on a page without surrounding spam like online casinos or essay services. I’ve seen great crowd links and complete garbage. It’s just a tool.
The era of content sites as we knew it is gone. Smart now sells t-shirts (lazycat.rocks), founded an agency, and manages clients. Where are his own sites, where is that freedom and passive income?
Right now, Yandex holds only 38% of RuNet traffic according to LiveInternet stats. Google holds 60%. When you build a site, you immediately lose 60% of potential traffic. Is that really normal?
Maybe it’s worth trying to optimize for Google—or even better, for foreign Google markets?
This post isn’t to stroke my ego—I don’t have one. There are plenty of things I don’t do, and I make stupid mistakes. Who among us is perfect? Nobody. It’s purely a matter of persistence and direction—the ability to go all the way.
I hope you succeed!