Pounds and Sense – A Personal Update

Nick Everything Else events, blogging, retirement 4 Comments

Today I wanted to share some information about my personal circumstances and my plans for Pounds and Sense (in particular) going forward.

As you may know, I’ve been running PAS for nearly 10 years now and during that time have published over 560 blog posts. Most of these are still available to view via the sidebar on the right (or below if you’re reading this on a mobile). They cover the entire period during Covid, and some in particular make quite poignant reading now.

Nothing is forever, though, and as I’m now 70 I’ve decided the time has come to wind down the blog. My health remains reasonable (touch wood) but I have other interests I want to devote more time and energy to.

In addition, I am now officially retired and no longer registered as self-employed. In fact, Pounds and Sense hasn’t made a profit for some time. As other bloggers will testify, it has become much harder to make money this way in recent years – especially if (like me) you’re a one-man – or one-woman – band.

A major cause of this – in my view anyway – is the rise of AI in online search. In the past you could attract traffic by targeting certain keywords and phrases and hoping Google (or whoever) would rank your article high in search results for the keyword/s in question. With most people nowadays going no further than the AI answers at the top, that method of attracting readers no longer works nearly as well as it used to.

For this and (no doubt) other reasons, the last few years have seen a big fall in the number of other UK personal finance blogs. The ones left are mainly those run as a full-time business, often with a team of staff. Really these are personal finance websites rather than blogs in the traditional sense. There are still a few brave solo bloggers left, and more power to them. But from comments I have seen, I know many of them are struggling as well.

Meanwhile, the costs keep on rising. Pounds and Sense is a self-hosted WordPress website, so I have to pay annual fees for the domain name and (in particular) the hosting service. In total I am now paying over £200 a year for this, which in the last year or two is more money than I have made (directly) from the blog itself. There are other costs  as well such as accountancy services and even electricity bills. I also have to pay for the graphics service I use (PicMonkey) to create the cover images for my blog posts.

For all these reasons, then, I am winding down Pounds and Sense. I won’t stop immediately, but my posts will likely be less frequent in the coming months. In April next year my hosting service (the largest expense I have to pay) comes up for renewal, and at that point I plan to allow it to lapse. So after that date, all past and current content will cease to be available here. If there are any articles you particularly want to save for future reference, therefore, I recommend that you copy them sooner rather than later.

I should also say that as I will be closing PAS, I won’t be taking on any further sponsored posts or other commercial partnerships or arrangements. I don’t think it would be fair to take on such projects knowing that the blog will in all likelihood cease to exist a few months later. I am still happy to consider guest posts but on the understanding that they may not be up here very long.

With all that said and done, I do enjoy blogging, and it’s possible I might continue Pounds and Sense in some shape or form using a free or low-cost hosting service such as Blogger or WordPress.com. I might also copy over some content to this. Using this type of service has its drawbacks, but of course it has the big attraction of being cheap or free! Obviously I will let PAS readers know nearer the time if I decide to proceed with this.

In closing, thank you for reading this far; and particular thanks to my regular readers, some of whom have been with me for many years. I wish you all a happy and prosperous future in these increasingly uncertain times.

As always, you are very welcome to leave a comment below if you wish.