As many of you already know, I founded The Wellness Insider 3 years ago and I now have a dilemma. To close it down or not.
After reading this post by Mumbrella’s content director on why they’re closing Mumbrella Asia, the points he made really hit home.
Firstly, let’s be practical. The Wellness Insider is a business and if a business doesn’t make any money, it does not make sense to keep it afloat. In these 3 years, the only time that I’ve ever broken even was when I started teaching Kombucha Workshops and I thought that I could finally make profits since I no longer have paid writers in my team, but that too seemed to have died down as seen from the lack of sign-ups for the past 2 workshops.
No company nowadays is willing to pay for educational advertorials. Advertisers want their $1 to bring $1 back to their companies, which I totally understand because I too (as a small company) would like to see such results due to limited budget. If I’m truly looking for educational branding, then I’d rather spend it with a PR agency who would then get my company free articles on various media agencies, right? So my pool gets smaller as I try to pitch for people to pay me for backlinks to help their SEO.
Secondly, while I’m proud that we’ve amassed a steady readership, I am also constantly battling contributors who want to contribute only 1 or 2 articles purely for the sake of putting in backlinks to improve their clients’ SEO. I know the game. And it’s too tiring to have to battle with these people who give me nasty comments whenever I remove/change their links.
So should I throw in the towel and spend my time and energy on other things that will still fulfil me but yet also pay me the money? One friend of mine outrightly told me yes and that I shouldn’t “waste time”. But about 3 others have said that I should still maintain The Wellness Insider’s website and only update it whenever I do have time and energy to write/edit. But without motivation, will I ever get the inspiration to write?
Nonetheless, it is a shame to see 3 years of work to just disappear and I’ve seen a former competitor simply vanish as well. Another competitor has since pivoted to do more marketing consultancy in the field of wellness.
I have thought of pivoting The Wellness Insider to be more than just an e-magazine because that was my initial plan to begin with. I didn’t want it to be just about content. However, I don’t have any partners to run this business with me and it does take a team to go and handle various aspects of the business before we can go pitch to investors, get funding to flesh out The Wellness Insider to be what my initial vision of it was.
Conclusion? I’m still hem hawing. It feels as if I have to choose between maintaining my comatose baby and pulling the plug. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Looks like 2020 will see more changes for me.
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