Shutting down Craft Your Content. 💀

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Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

Perfection is static, and I am in full progress.” — Anaïs Nin

Yes, you read that correctly.

Over the next 75 days, we’ll be shutting down Craft Your Content. The business and the brand will be no more.

That’s not the end of this story, though.

This has been coming for probably a couple years, but hit hard in October of 2023 when we lost over half our clients for a myriad of different reasons. Six figures in less than a fortnight.

Plus the loss of my brand-new-to-me flat rental, days after I looked around one night and uttered the fatal statement, “I think I might finally be happy.” A number of other personal setbacks and slings and arrow wounds compounded. A recurring undertone that none of it mattered, least of all me. I spent most of the month curled in a ball, not even mustering the will to sob.

To those of you who have stuck it out with me in the 6 months since, as we stumbled and bumbled along like an early 20th-century airplane, trying to will its way back into the air…I am so very grateful.

When I started Craft Your Content in 2015, a peer told me “Craft Your Content is a bad name for a writing business. Everyone will think it is about crafts. Your SEO will be terrible.”

I believed that the Craft of the content was going to be the most important thing in online writing back then.

I still believe that.

These days, you can't throw a wet rag into the void without some guru waxing poetic about the importance of Craft in your writing, while simultaneously posting about how “thinking is really the least important part of the creative process.”

Here it hits. There's a real problem happening with online creation, and it isn't just AI. As we've commoditized creativity, we've lost the fire. That spark within a writer that yearns to glow and smolder.

It's one thing to want to make money doing what you love, it's another to lose that love because you get wrapped up in how to make money from it.

So many writers and creators I've spoken to and follow have voiced varying levels of this in recent months. "I miss how it was before I was so worried about algorithms and niche content and pillars and attracting customers and all the digital and content marketing. I want to get back to saying the things that are bursting within me and need to get out. The interests I love exploring. The stories that compel me. Not always worrying about what might rank or get enough views, but doing more of the stuff that brought people to me in the first place."

Unfortunately, we spent the better part of the past nine years wandering down that path of content and online marketing.

• We could bend our vision and mission just enough to turn around content marketing teams that were struggling with content and process.
• We could buoy thought leaders' articles to a place where they were landing columns in high-ranking online publications and websites.
• We could craft content that drove traffic to brands that made them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It was not a bad path! I am in awe of the work great content marketers do. The way they are able to mix maths and creativity and statistics and data and sociology and psychology, and somehow build audiences of beloved followers who will lemming themselves right off a cliff if they’re asked to (though a good content marketer would never ask!)

But it was the wrong path for us. It was the wrong path for me.

When push came to shove, we could not compete with the editing agencies who focus on marketing content because there was no competing to be done.

It isn’t who we are.

As I told a client this week about some of the changes we had planned (so they knew what was going on when “things started looking different”) they shrugged on the Zoom. “I’ve always thought Craft Your Content wasn’t a great name for what you do. It’s so much more. Sorry, I probably should have said something sooner, huh.”

Not your fault, friend. I’ve heard this before, granted for completely different reasons.

I've got a lot of emotions about this.

Obviously excited for what lies ahead. Absolutely chuffed to be more focused on writing and craft again, working with writers to help them share the best they have within themselves. I want them to be more confident, more excited about writing, more thoughtful in their process, more excited to push publish on their pieces, and more committed to digging into the hard work of improving their writing craft.

I want them to fall back in love with their love of writing.

But I'm also quite sad. This has been a hard transition and we’ve barely started. I've poured so much of myself into CYC, helped so many people, put out such brilliant writing and commentary, made SO many mistakes, the list goes on. It feels like a little piece of what I've built is dying.

As I told the team, at this point we're at Mother of Dragons levels. We’ll have to burn it to the ground to build something new back up.

So yes.

By August 2024, Craft Your Content — my pride and joy of almost a decade — will cease to exist.

This will be the end of one chapter; perhaps Book 2 of an anthology that keeps getting better and doesn’t leave folks rooting for the killer shark like we all did during Jaws II: The Revenge.

If you follow me (or CYC) on socials, you’ll start noticing little changes and hints and easter eggs of secrets we will slowly be putting out. We’ll also celebrate what CYC was, and how it brought us to the here and now.

I think there is a space out there for writers who are committed to improving their writing and craft. Not just in the fiction and self-publishing niche, but in essays and personal nonfiction and newsletters and blogs.

Sure, “no one reads this online writing anymore.” Everything is 7 second short videos, that’s all we have an attention span for these days. It’s all about fancy graphics and catchy quips that jerk the algorithm in your favor.

But it doesn’t have to be. I know it’s changing. We’re seeing the changes. People are starting to push back against the machines. Rage-filled at the lies and manipulation, wanting to get back to a world where thinking and writing and learning are important and sought-after.

I'm terrified that this is the stupidest thing I have ever done in business, and possibly life. It might crash every single line of income that we have!

But I know there are writers out there who are looking for editors who care. Not just about grammar and proper punctuation placement, but about the ideas and the passion and the storytelling.

• They care about the writer and want to work with them to help create the best piece of writing possible.
• They want to be a champion for the voice of those who need to scream.
• They want to be someone who challenges the writer while making them realize how beautiful their writing is, and how important it is for the world to know what they have to say.

I hope that you will be interested in following along as we do this.

I hope you might recognize in yourself a bit of this writer I know is out there.

I think there are many more of us than the tech companies and major media makers want us to believe.

It’s time we started getting louder, making our voices heard, and taking back the “content” they think they’ve taken away.

‘Til next time! ~ Elisa

PS - If you don’t want to follow along, don’t care for this type of writing and business, saw my name pop up in your inbox and are thinking “Wow, I forgot that she existed” — I promise I will not be offended by your unsubscribe. I’m sad to see you go, but I understand that we aren’t for you anymore.

I’m cautiously optimistic that everyone will be up for the adventure and new direction 🤞, but prepared for a subscriber exodus. 🔚