Remember when every blogger was publishing monthly income reports?
Pat Flynn kicked it off with Smart Passive Income. Then a wave of affiliate bloggers followed, sharing exactly which brands paid them and how much traffic they pulled in. My buddy Adam Enfroy went from managing the BigCommerce affiliate program to making serious money with his own blog after watching that playbook.
So what happened to all those blogs? And is blogging dead?
I recently sat down with Daniel Stanica, founder of Competico and Monetize Better, on Affiliate Nerd Out to find out. Daniel has spent 20 years in digital, starting as a developer before building his own blogs and getting deep into SEO. Four years ago, he collected data on 100 blogs publishing income reports. This year, he went back to see where they ended up. His write-up, The Great Blogging Collapse, caught my eye, and the findings are rough.
Key Takeaways
- The median blog in the study lost 85% of its organic traffic between 2022 and 2026.
- Google’s Helpful Content Update and AI Overviews are the two main causes.
- 21 of the 100 blogs kept growing, and they shared four traits: firsthand experience, a strong brand, a real product, and an owned audience.
- Content that AI can summarize will be summarized. Content built on your own testing still earns traffic.
- Treat AI visibility as one channel in your mix, not your only one.
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Two Things Broke Blogging
Daniel’s bar for the study was simple: blogs making at least $5,000 a month and publishing income reports. He covered make money online, finance, recipes, DIY, and more.
Four years later, roughly two-thirds of those blogs had lost more than half their traffic.
“It’s shocking,” Daniel told me. He points to two causes. First, the Helpful Content Update, which “pretty much decimated a lot of these informational blogs. It was by design.” Second, AI search. Google now pulls information from websites, synthesizes it, and shows the answer right on the results page.
According to the research Daniel cited, when an AI Overview appears, roughly 65% to 68% of people never click through to a website. They get their answer and close the browser. Those zero click searches are where a lot of blog traffic went.
Meet Daniel Stanica
Daniel Stanica is the founder of Competico and a researcher in the affiliate marketing space with 20 years in digital. He started out as a developer, built his own blogs, and picked up SEO more than a decade ago to grow them. Today he runs an advisory business that helps digital businesses stay competitive through traditional SEO and AI visibility. He also runs MonetizeBetter.com, where he shares research with an audience of publishers and bloggers.
His latest study, The Great Blogging Collapse, tracked 100 income-reporting blogs over four years to learn why most collapsed and what the survivors did right.
What the 21 Survivors Had in Common
Not every blog went down. Daniel dug into the winners and found four shared traits:
- Firsthand experience. They wrote about things they actually did.
- A solid brand. People searched for them by name.
- A product. Not just content, but something they sold.
- An owned audience. A newsletter, group, or community that showed up regardless of Google.
“Google rewards you with traffic when you are an established brand, a trusted brand,” Daniel said. In other words, Google sends traffic to the people who can already get it.
Affiliate Marketing SEO Today: Write Content Google Can’t Summarize
This was the part that hit home for me. I asked Daniel whether affiliates reviewing products they never touch can still rank.
His answer: “If your content can be summarized by AI Overviews, it will be.”
A generic “Top 10 Loan Providers” post with no actual comparison is easy for Google to summarize from other sources. But “I tested these 10 loan providers for six months, and here’s what happened” is something AI can’t produce on its own.
I asked what that looks like for me, since I review affiliate networks. Daniel suggested skipping the “what is Impact and what are its payment terms” article. Instead, write a step-by-step guide showing how you actually sign up, pick programs that fit your audience, and start promoting. Your methodology, your pros and cons, your insights. That’s the content that gets cited and ranked.
And finance affiliates? Don’t leave the niche. Daniel would build a finance site today around personal journeys, like how he saved a specific amount each month, paired with the tools that helped.
How to Recover From an AI Overviews Traffic Drop
If your traffic is already dropping, Daniel’s article lays out four options: consolidate, convert, productize, and sell.
When he reached out to about 160 bloggers for partnerships, he got roughly 20 responses. Most had abandoned or deprioritized their sites. Walking away is an option, but he doesn’t recommend it.
Instead, look at the assets you still have. An email list. A brand. Adam is a great example here. When his blog traffic collapsed, he moved his audience to YouTube, and he’s doing well there now.
Daniel also suggested something a lot of affiliates resist: paid traffic. If an old SEO page converted well, you already know the keywords that make money. “Why not launch a couple of PPC campaigns and replace the SEO traffic with paid traffic?” The margin shrinks, but some profit beats no profit.
Don’t Chase AI Visibility Alone
AI search is here to stay. But Daniel warns against treating it like the new SEO. Citation sources shift constantly, and one platform update can flip which sites get cited overnight.
His advice is to make AI visibility one part of your marketing mix. Start with a brand audit: search yourself in the major LLMs and see what they say. Then make sure AI crawlers can actually reach your site, since tools like Cloudflare can block them by default. Finally, check that your info is consistent across the web. AI tools trust consensus.
YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn keep showing up as cited sources, so building a presence there helps with both humans and AI.
If You’re Starting From Zero
Daniel is still building affiliate sites, even after some of his own got hit. His starting point today is community: a newsletter, a forum, and a YouTube channel. Show people you actually do what you review, and build your brand in your industry.
He also recommends negotiating private deals with brands. Unique coupons, custom placements, or ad budgets help with attribution when customers bounce between your link, ChatGPT, and their phone before buying.
And one last tip from Daniel: plenty of bloggers have abandoned their sites. That could be a buying opportunity.
Conclusion
So, is blogging dead? The old model of publishing content, building backlinks, and waiting for traffic is. But blogging built on real experience isn’t, and neither is affiliate marketing. The affiliates who win now are the ones putting their name on real experience and building an audience they own.
My advice? Get started today. I’ve got 200+ episodes of this podcast, and not all of them are amazing. I wouldn’t be here if I’d waited for perfection.
Watch the full episode with Daniel on Affiliate Nerd Out, and check out his full study at danielstanica.com.
FAQs
Is blogging dead? No, but the old model is. Blogs that rely on generic, summarizable content are losing traffic to AI Overviews. Blogs built on firsthand experience, a strong brand, and an owned audience are still growing.
What are zero click searches? Searches where people get their answer on the results page, often from an AI Overview, and never click through to a website.
How much traffic did blogs lose in the study? The median blog lost 85% of its organic traffic from 2022 to 2026, and about two-thirds lost more than half.
Can affiliate sites still rank on Google? Yes, if the content reflects firsthand testing and experience that AI can’t pull from other sources.
Should affiliates optimize for AI search? Yes, but as one channel among several, alongside a newsletter, YouTube, and other owned or diversified traffic.
Dustin Howes
AFFILIATE MARKETING CONSULTANT
Dustin Howes is an Affiliate Marketing Concierge who equips brands to build high-performing affiliate programs with a personal touch. He is a connector and specializes in network marketing, partner recruitment, program strategy, and simplifying the complexities of affiliate growth. Through his services and resources, Dustin empowers companies to create meaningful, long-term partnerships that drive real results.
