Five things the Wine Curmudgeon learned in moving the blog from free to paid

And yes, most of the changes were improvements

The blog’s 14th annual birthday week starts today. So here are five things I’ve learned about wine writing, the Internet, and the wine business in the eight months that the blog hasn’t been free:

1. No need or reason to deal with SEO ever again. For which the Wine Curmudgeon is more grateful than he can describe. SEO, for those of you who haven’t had to acknowledge Google as your master and overlord, stands for search engine optimization. All posts must follow a variety of “suggestions” to make it easier for Google to find the post (or website or whatever) so that it can show up on the first page of search results. This used to make me crazy – how can I write a quality review if I have to make sure the name of the wine is in the headline, the subhed, and in the post three or four times? That’s not writing; that’s nursery school repetition.

2. No more complaints about the ads. These usually came in two forms: Either the ads stopped the page from loading quickly, or the ads were stupid. I couldn’t do much about the first reason, but the second was usually the fault of the person complaining. Most of the ads that showed up (given the way the Internet works) were tailored to the person’s web browsing habits, age, and demographics. So they saw what they were clicking on elsewhere. Ironically, most of the people who complained about the ads (yes, I kept a list) didn’t move to the paid version.

3. Too many marketing and PR people telling me what to run on the blog. I actually had discussions (some email, some on the phone) with people who didn’t understand why I made the editorial decisions. “But this is something your readers need to know about,” I heard over and over. And over. And over. And no, I don’t know why this happened so much in the past eight months.

4. I will never, ever, ever have to write a $3 wine review again. This was always one of the most popular posts – thank you, SEO – and it was always a tremendous aggravation to write. It’s not so much that the wines were terrible, which they were. It’s that they were the same terrible every year, and I would get emails from people who didn’t understand why the wines were the same terrible. I’m not criticizing them for liking them; I don’t judge people by the wine they drink. I just wish they didn’t expect me to like them, too.

5. “You don’t run enough wine reviews.” One man canceled his $7 a month subscription because the 200 or so reviews that appear each year weren’t enough. Which taught me you can’t please everyone, though I still catch myself trying to do just that.

Photo: A Koolshooter from Pexels