My Wedding Songs Year 20 Retrospective: Rebrand, Revenue Challenges, and the Future

Behind the scenes challenges and celebrations of operating an internet publishing company, aka a blog (My Wedding Songs).

20 years ago on July 31st, 2003, I purchased a domain to start my journey as an online solopreneur.

In an effort to be transparent, I thought I would share some of the behind-the-scenes passion that goes into My Wedding Songs and what to expect moving forward.

FYI, if the word “we” is used, it more than likely means me (Matt).

My Wedding Songs Highlights:

1. July 2003 purchased weddingmuseum.com domain to be a wedding planning website.

2. January 2017 rebranded the domain to myweddingsongs.com.to focus only on wedding music suggestions.

3. January 2000 started the Wedding Songs Podcast.

4. June 2022 published the first Wedding MusicLetter.

5. January 2023 published the Wedding Songs Planner book.

6. June 2023 wedding planning PDFs available on Etsy.

Here’s the good news:

• Through the years, we have helped inspire 25+ million people to discover song ideas.

• My Wedding Songs made enough for me to go full-time on the business in January 2020.

• We have been able to attend many wedding, DJ, and business conferences to learn and share our knowledge and brand.

• We’ve been able to hire contractors to help them grow with experience and income.

• We have been donating part of our profits to charities each year.

• Creating my own category of “wedding songs planning” has been the best decision ever! This was all because of the book “Play Bigger” and following Category Pirates. 🏴‍☠️

• Growth of the Wedding MusicLetter to 7k+ readers with a 35-42% open rate.

And the bad news:

• Owning a business is stressful and health insurance sux for SMB owners.

• Selling the “Wedding Songs Planner” for too little. So much time and knowledge went into it and the book should have been selling for $20+.

• We have seen many copycats which have cut into our Google visibility and ultimately revenue.

• Relying primarily on one source of revenue - ads.

• Google. Ugh. As an online publisher that has ~89% of traffic from Google~ the decrease in visitors after an algorithm update has been dreadful.

More about the decrease in traffic:

As you can see, there was a Google Algo update in Sept. 2022 that affected the website from the big dip that resulted in a significant decrease in visitors.

When you are an online publisher relying on visitors seeing ads, the decrease in visitors results in a smaller wallet.

Yes, I am an experienced SEO professional, and many, and I mean many, improvements were made to the site.

The biggest challenge as a solopreneur with almost 800 pieces of content is keeping it all current which Google will reward.

Unfortunately, I am not going to deep dive into the comeback strategy (buy me a craft beer IRL for the secret sauce).

As the below Google rankings chart indicates, higher rankings are FINALLY being achieved. Patience you must have my young Jedi!

Even though our revenue from ads is down, we are doing OK because steps were taken beforehand. I hope everyone learned from the COVID shutdowns to be prepared for the unexpected.

Visitors to your website are not Everything

This is very important. You can make a million dollars from 100 visitors to your website and you can make $100 from one million visitors. #truth

Diversification of income

Any and all online publishers should not solely rely on ad revenue alone. With the instability of traffic from Google, website owners must create multiple streams of income.

This is why I have created other sources of revenue including:

• Writing a book to sell on Amazon (Wedding Songs Planner).

• Publishing wedding planning digital downloads available on Etsy.

• Creating a valuable newsletter that subscribers would pay for to access premium helpful content (and share ideas), known as the Wedding MusicLetter.

• There are other avenues being tested but I don’t want to show all of my cards right now. I am sure you understand particularly if you are a competitor reading this. 😜

A new search future

With the implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into software, plugins, extensions, and so much more, tools are getting smarter.

This can also be said about search with the invention of ChatGPT and “answer tools”. A Google search update is forthcoming with the implementation of SGE (Search Generative Experience).

Yep, this scares the crap out of me as to what the future will look like for publishers (bloggers) with answers being generated and shown without having to go to an actual website (even more so than now).

What upcoming wedding song suggestions can you expect?

1. Trending songs will be showcased on every published playlist on myweddingsongs.com (Updating as fast as I can) Trending wedding hits are also featured in the newsletter.

2. New songs will be consistently added to popular wedding-themed playlists on MyWeddingSongs.com and in the month-end newsletters.

3. A new “Wedding Songs Planner” will be published with updated playlists and also include wedding planning guides in 2024/25.

4. Continue to offer extremely helpful wedding music tips and guides through the Wedding MusicLetter. Hint: “Play this not that” music suggestions are forthcoming.

5. We will be an exhibitor at the 2023 Wedding MBA in November and one of the sponsors of the DJ track! We postponed being an exhibitor at DJX23 to DJX24 because we have a show date conflict.

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Thank you, as always, for following my journey with a passion for music and weddings. It took 17 years to rebrand and 20 to try to be a valuable resource to engaged couples planning their weddings and helping wedding pros be more music knowledgeable. I hope this is only the beginning of a long-term relationship helping each other succeed and creating the ultimate wedding experience.

Stay tuned for more song ideas for a romantic and raging party!

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.”

Matt at his home office.

STOP! HAMMER TIME!

Support my work by being a paid subscriber.

Cheers,

Matt Campbell (Founder of My Wedding Songs, myweddingsongs.com)