2024 PaddlingLight Update

It’s 2024 and PaddlingLight is still kicking away. It’s been 20 years of blogging about paddling on PaddlingLight and before that Nessmuking and before that on a different website. It’s hard to believe, but this is one of the longest lasting blogs about paddling on the internet. I’m almost a grey beard now, so I should get really good at rolling my sea kayak soon.

Anyway, I have thoughts…

Blogging over Marketing

As I’ve expressed before, I think that social media ended up wrecking the golden age of blogging. There used to be a bunch of different paddling blogs bouncing ideas off of each other. Now, it’s just a few real paddlers making paddling websites. Most of the newer websites are designed by marketers to drive marketing traffic instead of expressing real opinions based on usage and experience. It is what it is, but I’m still writing about my personal experiences first and worrying about whether or not I’m going to drive affiliate marketing second. I mainly want to share my experiences.

But making money is nice. I’m still doing that through ads and affiliate links. The links work like this. If I link to a product and you buy it from the link and keep it, then I make a percentage of the sale. I also run a few ads from long-time sponsors of PaddlingLight. You see those in the sidebar. I’m kind of sick of Google ads, so I’m trying to figure out how to replace that income. It’s about $1,200 or so a year after I started limiting the amount of ads that Google automatically inserts into the website. That’s a drop from previous years due to my change in what I allow.

In the past, I offered deck slates and the sales were good, but I’m not sure I want to ship products again.

AI Generative Content

AI generative content is now on the scene. I wanted to try an experiment with it. Last year, I used AI to write two articles. One was a complete joke, and the other targeted a navigation topic. I’ve written a lot on canoe and kayak navigation, so I know that topic well. Here’s a list of canoe and sea kayak navigation articles on PaddlingLight. And I used to write a navigation column for Ocean Paddler Magazine. I wanted to see how AI would do on the topic, and how much trouble I’d be in as far as search as more websites started using AI.

I used ChatGPT to generate the content, and it didn’t do a great job. I ended up having to revise a bunch of the article to make it factual and make sense. Basically, it was terrible and took me about as much time revising it as it would have just writing it.

But, the article did well. It was in Google’s top 10 almost immediately after I published it. It’s current average position in Google search is 3.4. That’s solid. It’s also scary because the big G is ranking generative content so high. With the amount of trash coming out of generative AI, it’s going to be hard to compete with that. Verge did a great job of contextualizing how terrible generative AI is in a recent printer review.

Here’s what Google Gemini had to say when I asked it about Brother laser printers, which is not worth reading but which is by definition an incredible example of experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness because Google is synthesizing the entire web for this information, right? Isn’t that the whole idea of these LLMs, or are we just kind of fooling ourselves

From the Verge

AI generative content sucks and I’m not going to use it on PaddlingLight. That’s not why I write and it isn’t what this website is about. You get to read me here. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, but it isn’t AI content.

Reviews

I love reviewing products and the reviews will continue. I’m going to change it up in 2024 by trying to stick to the same format for review. You can see that new format in my Big Agnes Tiger Wall UL2 Review. It’s basically the same as previous years, but I’m going to try and be more consistent as a writing challenge.

I’m also considering adding a first look post when I first get the gear. So, I’d have a first look, and then after using it enough to feel like I have a good grasp on the gear, then I’ll write a full review.

We’ll see how that goes. I have a lot of products that I’ve committed to reviewing this year. Hopefully, I can keep that up.

I am curious about what you’d like to hear about products in a review.

Skeg Vs. Rudder

Skeg

Greenland Paddle vs. Euro Paddle

I use a Euro Paddle. Use what you like.

Kayak and Canoe Drawings

I’m still offering the historic canoe and kayak drawings for sale on the website. I’m thinking a bit about how to simplify this. When someone downloads a free drawing. I get an email. Most people fail to understand that they can add multiple products to the cart and then they do individual orders for each plan and my email box fills up. I don’t like that.

Instead, I’m thinking about consolidating the free plans into one massive download that includes every single plan. I’m also considering offering more Super Packs for that paid drawings.

I kind of want to offload this from the website though. I feel like enough Siskiwit Bay and Siskiwit LV sea kayaks have been built, so I don’t know if there’s value in keeping my designs out there.

This year, I plan to make decisions on the future of the free canoe and kayak plan project.

More Paddling and Less Biking

Last year, I biked. I rode 2,074 miles over 84 days of riding. I used to paddle that much or more in a year. I did a trip last year and a lot of that riding was training for the ride. This year I don’t have a big ride planned, so I’ll be riding less and paddling more. I want to write more about paddling, but with having a family and a busy photo workshop business, it’s going to be hard to find the time to blog about day trips. I’m still going to try to do at least a couple.

Have you been reading the website long enough to remember the PedalingLight April Fool’s joke? That was a good one. :)

Whelp, that’s the 2024 site update. Anything that you’d like to see me blog about that I didn’t mention about? Would you like to give me a solid pat on the back? Comments, even short ones, make me feel good about continuing this 20+ year experiment in writing.