Back in April 2026 this website had climbed to 180k sessions a month. It had grown from strength to strength. It funded my family’s move from the Philippines to the UK. A decision we took becasue my youngest daughter Izzy, showed signs of having autism. We moved to the UK because of its healthcare options for Izzy.
Since the move, I started to find my feet and get more photography time again and what started out with writing 70% of the time about gear, through the lens of a photographer with 20 years experience and based on cameras and lenses that I owned myself, gradually flipped that stat on its head as I found myself longing to pursue the art of photography much more so than to keep banging on about gear that in all honesty, was more than good enough for making prints and artwork 5 years ago, if not longer.
I used to earn my living soley from landscape photography. These days my tastes have changed and I find myself much more interested in stories and time. I don’t restrict myself to one genre but I consider myself to be somewhat of a documentary photographer.
In April, at any given time I would see 150+ people browsing my website. As I sit here now, there are 15 of you reading through various articles, 10 minutes ago it was just 7.
So what happened?
In May 2026, my traffic had been climbing consistantly since I restarted this website back in June 2025. Google as far as I could tell, wanted real people talking about gear and offering insight. I’ve been a professional landscape photographer, I’ve run a camera store and I have used virtually every camera system available. Great I thought, I’ll simply write no nonsense articles about the (at the time) large collection of gear that I owned, pulling from my experience. I’ll shoot all my own photography which will give me a great excuse to get out with the cameras more and I’ll also write more philosophical articles on photography and life which interest me much more. It seemed to work. Around April I reached 180k sessions and assumed the next plateau of traffic would come before another potenital climb.
I had held off on putting ads on my website while I still lived in the Philippines as I wanted to keep the website as clean as possible but with the move to the UK requiring us selling off all our belongings in the Philippines and the huge expense of setting up home in the UK, in January, I joined Mediavine and ran ads and alongside the affiliates I had within certain articles, my income grew and it looked like my family and I had a secure future, a decent income, enough to give my daughters a good life and allow me to pursue my passion.
Then around May 27th 2026 something happened, the growth didn’t materialise, I noticed strange traffic patterns on some of my most popular articles and then it hit. A huge drop in traffic, almost overnight. From 180k down to a level which suggest just over 120k sessions a month. My income is directly tied to the level of traffic that this website receives. That was a 33% hit in income that would filter through in 2 months time as I’m paid 2 months in arrears. Seriously concerning but alone, survivable.
However, if my traffic could drop by that much overnight, it caused me to worry , I mean seriously stress that this isn’t safe, this isn’t something to build my daughter’s future on.
The other problem
I mentioned my youngest daughter and her developmental concerns earlier. As soon as we arrived in the UK, I registered her with the local GP, I immediately explained our concerns and we got her registered with the local Health Visitors. They are in place to assess children’s needs, social, developmental or otherwise. She was assessed and the brevity of our concerns was confirmed.
She needed referals in literally every area of devlopment. Her scoring was like a hammer blow to us. She didn’t just slip into the referal category, shes was virtually off the scale. We arranged audiology assessments to rule that out, we arranged further visits from the health visitors, we had my sister, who has worked in childcare for over 25 years come and spend time with her to give us a no nonsense opinion and I pushed my finances to the limit getting Izzy 3 days a week in a local nursery to give her the socialisation and structure she desperately needed. She started showing signs of improvement, of seeing that cheeky glint in her eye that she has when she has been mentally stimulated, has started to pick up on the routines and is seemingly content. But behind the scenes, the pressure was mounting. My wife had been granted a visit visa only, as we opted for the fastest option to get us all over to the UK.
Eventually, after much discussion, most of it heated, myself and professionals insisting that the least disruptive option to Izzy, of remaining in the UK was for the best, my wife left the UK with Izzy and is still currently in the Philippines.
So what’s this all got to do with the algorithm breaking my website?
My initial concerns about the first traffic drop were not revolving around having an extravagant life, material possessions or anything fancy. I’m quite a simple person. Let me walk outside in fresh air and pay the bills and I’m content. All my hobbies are free. My concerns were whether the traffic level would allow me to still get Izzy back to the UK , to still fund my wifes very expensive spousal visa and both of their flights. I had no savings as I spent them getting us to the UK. I had no fallback anymore as I had prioritised getting Izzy to where she needed to be. I had to be able to save up the money to get them back here.
Apart from the obvious disruption and lack of available care for Izzy in the Philippines, my income was no longer certain and along with it, if Izzy had to wait until I have saved enough for my wife’s visa before being able to come back to the UK, it created uncertainty around how long that would be exactly.
When we moved to the UK , given the continuous growth of the website, along with me folllowing every Google guidline that I was aware of, being a real person, a real photographer and taking all my own photos, writing all my own words and giving opinions that I felt were useful, even when it would probably result in less people purchasing through my affiliate links, spending my savings seemed a small and necessary risk to take. Now as Izzy was being removed from the UK, I was absolutely unconvinced and made my concerns heard.
Since that intial drop, I have never been able to work out what it is that Google was doing. I’ve spent hours trying to work it out. I continued writing in the expectation that this new level was simply Google resetting my baseline traffic and that continuing to write articles would at some point lead to renewed growth, or even just stabilisation. At this level, the finances were tight but maneagable. It held for a couple of months and I started to work on my projects and photography. Moving away from the gear voluntarily.
I realised two things. Earning a living as an independant photographer writing about gear was getting cut off as Google controls the doorway and they are implementing AI answers to everything that they can. They’re using independant writers knowledge experience and often the exact words and photos we produce in order to cut us out and steal the entire pie.
Maybe they would do it slowly and leave me a year or two’s runway in which I could build up my photography work, which would be fine. I have a passion for photography, for documenting life, culture and the land. I have a lot of experience printing, having previously earned a living selling landscape prints, I love to create projects. I would simply transition over to that and hopefully within a year or two I would earn a meagre but very satisfying living actually doing what I love rather than focusing on gear.
But Google has yet again thrown a spanner in the works. This last week has dealt the death blow to that timeline. My taffic has now dropped to a level projecting to be around 24k sessions per month. From 180k to 24k in 3.5 months. If you are on the average salary of $65,000 per year in the USA, that percentage drop in your income would leave you with $8000. And I wasn’t earning the average salary.
My ability to get Izzy back to the UK now has a runway of two months. I have 2 months of income earned up until this point in which to discuss with her mother why it is necessary ( a difficult discussion indeed) , to get Izzy back here now, while I still can, to book flights, to renew my passport and to move house as I am having to downsize and to try to get my head out of this black cloud hanging over me in order to think straight, be productive and see the future clearly.
All I know right now is that I’ve been getting out with the camera more and more recently. Once again it may just be the thing that saves me. I have sold off almost all of my gear and have removed all distractions. Reviews of the first 2 cameras ever loaned to me, sorry, not going to happen, guides, settings, best lenses articles, all out of the window because of the algorithm, I have been forced in to focusing purely on what I actually want to do and that is to have a creative life , even a modest one, where I can provide for my children, give them a safe and secure environment and hopefully, never have to rely on Google or their algorithm ever again.
And on that note, if you want to follow along with how this all works out, see my current photography projects, or support me in anyway, as well as be notified when print drops happen, then now is the time to subscribe to my personal website and my Instagram where all my focus and attention will be from now on.
To everyone who has read this website, who has offered words of thanks, encouragement and particularly the thoughtful comments and emails I have received, I want to say a huge thanks. They really did mean a lot.