I don't think sponsored posts and 'career blogging' helped either. Before that blogging was usually personal, prompted good discussions and was descriptive unti

I don't think sponsored posts and 'career blogging' helped either. Before that blogging was usually personal, prompted good discussions and was descriptive until the goal seemed to become getting sponsored posts. Writing became less important and posts were mostly just incredible photos with links out to sponsors. The tone of writing changed too, it became more 'twee' with very little substance and when one blog became successful people copied it until we got to a point where every blog was a copy of each other all with editorial type layouts incredible photography but very little of what made the sites popular in the first place. (I will caveat this with the note that this was more in the personal, fashion, food, interior design, design blogging world)