Since I burned out at a job where saying no felt impossible, freedom has been my obsession.
Like, seriously, completely, and ABSOLUTELY obsessed.
Those loooooong hours in the office or factory when I should have been resting and spending time with family and friends or working on my hobbies made me so eager to reclaim my life.
And I did not want to just simply regain control. During those moments I also swore to myself that I would not lose command of my time again. Never again will I work for somebody else where there is a chance I would become a corporate slave.
It is a promise I carved in stone.
Should I ever return to the corporate world, it will be on my own terms. I will be the boss. A partner. A founder or a co-founder. Unless I absolutely have to or have no other choice, I will keep working on my business.
However, even as I work on my online business so I can work anywhere and anytime I want, I find that I am still not in total control of my life.
My daily goal is to make every second count. Everything I do should somehow benefit me and my online business in the future.
But there are times when I miss the mark. There are two causes. First, distractions. Second, I lack the resolve to resist them.
These distractions control me behind the scenes. Indirectly. Psychologically.
We’re both familiar with the rage bait that provokes instant indignation, right? It drags me into meaningless arguments that drain my emotional energy.
Politics, controversies, social issues, even pop culture takes. That’s usually the distraction that gets me every time.
My rabbit holes are another huge distraction. They hook my curiosity with fascinating facts, sucking away hours before I even realize I lost focus.
Honestly, I’ve lost count of how many times I caught myself watching videos from Johnny Harris, Architectural Digest, Marques Brownlee, Oversimplified, Veritasium, or TED right after finishing a WordPress tutorial. LOL.
My comfort-zone traps that offer mindless familiarity are another big distraction. They keep me feeling understood, safe, and validated, but at the expense of making real progress.
I mean, I’ve wasted hours reading relatable content on Substack or watching “you nailed it” videos on YouTube, without actually fixing any of my problems.
I also have distractions that target my insecurities and physical desires, where I cave pretty easily, especially when I’m just resting or taking a break.
The ads and posts curated by X’s algo were really good at this back when I still used the platform (formerly Twitter). They target my self-esteem and impulses, baiting me to do quick hits of gratification. I end up wasting my time (and sometimes my money).
Point is, did I actually hit my daily goal with these distractions in the way? Nope.
I would have hit my daily goal if I was completely free and totally in control, right? Right.
Somehow, it seems like tech giants and their algorithms became my new boss.
It didn’t take long after I started building my online business to notice what these distractions were doing to me. I noticed them as I struggled with setbacks during the first year of my blogging journey.
For three to six months, I failed to see any significant results. My blog wasn’t getting enough impressions on Google, and people weren’t really “seeing” the posts I shared on Facebook.
I had to reflect on what I was doing and find out what was wrong. And yes, I figured out that the issue was focus.
So a year later, in 2022, I quit Facebook. But as I kept using other social media platforms, I realized the problem wasn’t really the platforms or their algorithms.
The problem was me. I willingly handed over every detail of my life to these platforms. I was ignoring my privacy.
In doing so, I gave them the power to influence me, exploit my insecurities, and control my actions for their own profit. Once that reality sank in, I finally started taking my privacy seriously.
The idea: Privacy = freeing my mind from distractions and influences = gaining control and focusing on goals.
2022 was also the year I ran out of things to write about on my first travel blog, so I figured I’d launch another site to make some extra money.
Before I bought the domain, I honestly could not make up my mind about what to do with the site. I was stuck between building another blog I could turn into a personal brand or a niche site I could grow without ever putting my name on it.
But since I had just figured out how important privacy is, I leaned toward becoming a faceless creator and founded WanderInEurope.
I decided against writing about my life because I was afraid of sharing too much online and letting creeps or predators target me.
Like, have you heard those stories about how online creeps use public info like location check-ins, everyday photos, and tagged friends to track your whereabouts and trick you into dangerous situations?
I also chose to be a faceless creator because I didn’t want anyone I know to find out what I’m up to.
I wanted to be left alone to enjoy what I’m doing without any judgment or weird comments like “Oh, you left your high-paying engineering job? You threw your life away!“ I also wanted to avoid the jealous looks from people thinking “Must be fancy working from a coffee shop all the time!“
Above everything else, my relatives wouldn’t have any idea what I was up to, so no unsolicited opinions! But yeah, I was scared of what they would say if I ended up failing.
From a business standpoint, when I launched WanderInEurope, owning a website as a faceless creator offered a huge opportunity to make serious money.
How?
Since the content isn’t tied to me as an anonymous author, anyone could own the website. If another creator wants to buy my website or content, I can easily hand it off, and best of all, I can sell it for 30to 50 times my monthly earnings 🤑🤑🤑 from that website.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of Flippa, but that’s where all these opportunities are. Not affiliated with the site, though.
Anyway, did you know I was already day-dreaming 😅 about making 10k a month so I could sell the site and dump the money into physical assets with steady passive income?
We’re talking a 10-room apartment, farmland, or five Airbnbs in Palawan, literally one of the most beautiful islands on earth. Man, imagine that!
Anyway, in wealthier countries, that amount might not buy much real estate, but given our currency’s exchange rate against the US dollar, I could retire right then and never work another day in my life. My God.
Yep, building niche sites was that lucrative, which made it super tempting.
Another reason is that creating content anonymously is really scalable. I could hire SEO writers to write for my niche and let the money roll in!!
I followed Passive Income Geek on YouTube and Niche Site Lady on Twitter back then, and you wouldn’t believe that blogging this way could bring in seventy thousand dollars a month.
As a creator, the best part of staying anonymous is being able to write about pretty much whatever I want, provided it fits the niche.
For example, if my site is all about luxury travel, I can cover anything high-end: “Best 5-Star Hotels in Chamonix,” “How to Enjoy a Two-Week Luxury Cruise in the Mediterranean,” or “10 Three-Star Michelin Restaurants to Try in Tokyo.”
The possibilities are pretty much infinite.
On the other hand, if I’m putting my real name out there or building a personal blog, I get all the privacy headaches and I’m locked into only writing about what I personally know and do. If I stop getting out there or working on my main craft, my post ideas will totally dry up.
The blog might keep pulling in some cash, but it won’t grow anymore. Obviously, there are exceptions, but you get where I’m coming from.
Currently, I do not work on WanderInEurope very much, which, to emphasize, is my faceless niche site. I still maintain it with minimal updates to content and monetization, but I stopped publishing on it.
Note: after Google tanked WanderInEurope’s traffic in September 2023, I updated its About page to include my authorship. I wanted to build EEAT to help rankings. But before then, as far as I remember, it was pretty much a faceless niche site.
What I am putting my heart and soul into right now is Explore to Thrive, which is obviously my personal brand.
Yes, I changed my approach completely. I went from being a totally faceless creator to sharing everything about myself online.
I have a bunch of reasons for this. If I had to pick the main thing that pushed me to make the change, it was definitely AI.
I know we all realize AI is here to stay, right? It is not going anywhere whether we like it or not, so I feel like faceless content creation is pretty much dead.
That goes double if search engines bring in most of your readers.
Why?
Because pretty much anything you want to know, whether it is fun facts about your pet, why the Habsburg jaw happened, how to get over heartbreak, stuff to do in Buenos Aires, or how to write better AI prompts, is practically an instant answer away with AI.
These topics are the bread and butter of faceless creators online, but since AI can curate lists, explain simple facts, and summarize information in the blink of an eye for anyone, publishing posts like this no longer makes sense.
Frankly, making content to compete with AI is plain dumb (now). Whatever you spend time researching and posting anonymously will only be gobbled up by AI databases for training.
Believe me, I tried. I was dumb. LOL. 🤪
I tried writing travel itineraries, which AI handles poorly because it does not know where tourist attractions are located.
The next thing I knew, my content was there in Google AI Overviews. My post was listed as the source, but who is going to click through when everything you need is right there on your screen anyway?
And let’s not forget those AI creators who spam content in bulk. They are by far the worst faceless creators out there right now, ruining the web, YouTube, Facebook, you name it.
The stuff you spent two days thoughtfully writing to post anonymously will not stand a chance of getting seen with these “engagement farmers” everywhere.
RANT alert: I honestly, honestly despise all these gurus and influencers teaching folks how to make a quick buck off AI slop. They have a special place in hell. I mean, we are all just trying to make money online, so let’s keep the internet a great place for everyone instead of turning it into a slop dump.
The silver lining: the more junk content I see out there, the more I believe content made by humans for humans stands out.
Yes, it comes down to human connection. It really feels different when you read posts that spark that connection.
And yes, human connection is another reason why I am building a personal brand and writing this newsletter.
Throughout these years, I experienced how lonely it gets when you publish content anonymously: You are sharing what you like, but you are not letting anyone actually know who you are. 💔
I wanted to build real connections, but how could I? The content I put out never gave people anything that would open doors to “connection.”
Vulnerability? None. Authenticity? Barely.
The thing is, human connection is not just about keeping me from feeling lonely. It is also about sustainability and making the online business I am building last.
When your audience gets you, knows you, and trusts you, they stick by your side, actually read your stuff, buy what you sell, share your posts, and all that good stuff.
The best part is that once you build that connection, people actually search for you and pick your stuff over the competition.
You protect yourself from random algorithm changes that could wreck your business overnight!
Building a personal brand might not bring in as much cash as a faceless content business right off the bat, but it definitely comes with awesome perks.
From what I’ve seen from creators who have been at this for a while, you unlock perks like brand deals, high paying affiliate programs with custom payouts, paid subscriptions, and way more.
The best part about building a personal brand is that your reputation travels with you wherever you go, especially if you keep a website to showcase everything you have built.
Hear me out.
Just months ago, I discovered Lidiya on Substack while checking my notes feed. She posted about blogging and content creation like I do, so I immediately checked her profile and visited her website.
On her site, I saw that she helps other creators succeed, noted her features in TIME and Thrive Global, read about her full-time income through blogging, and learned about her values of freedom and an abundance mentality.
I immediately knew she was among the right individuals to build connections with.
Now, did you see how her strong personal brand inspired me to follow and subscribe to her newsletter?
Another reason why I’m taking the personal brand path as a creator is that the content creation process feels more natural and far more fun.
When I draft my posts, writing floooows easily on the page. I write what happened, why it happened, and what I learned or what solution I found to be helpful to my audience. Easy peasy.
Most of the time, there is no intensive research involved. I do not have to open nineteen tabs to curate information, which feels like a job.
The personal brand path for a content creator also feels super ‘liberating’ in a way.
When I try to write my posts in the most authentic way, I let go of the feelings, doubts, and fears bottled up inside me. Writing like this has been so therapeutic for me.
Right now, I have no regrets about leaving the faceless creator path and building a personal brand instead. I am really enjoying the indescribable joy of meeting people who share my values, goals, and interests through this new path.
I hope this personal brand helps me meet more people who share my wavelength.
One more confession: When I think about all this, I always get the feeling that this is the path I have been looking for all along.
I am really enjoying the process of creating content while building a personal brand. It pushes me to grow in different areas of my life and constantly seek positive change. I get to work on personal development by looking back on my journey as I write and share it.
It is a very productive use of my time, and I am having fun and feeling fulfilled at the same time.
So, what is the verdict? Is it better to be a faceless creator or build your personal brand? Well, I know you already know the answer.
My wish for you, though, and I hope, is that you are enjoying your journey as you build your dreams too, because that is what matters most.
To success!
Explore to Thrive Newsletter is part of my personal mission to walk alongside fellow creatives and show that it’s possible to build a sustainable online business from your lived experiences and passion. It’s completely free and open to everyone.
If it resonates with you and you feel inspired to support it, I would be very grateful for a tip. Your support helps me build Explore to Thrive, a community and resource I dream of creating where no creator feels alone and where we can grow, learn, and truly thrive together.
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I share honest insights from building an online business with a blog from the ground up, lessons from my mistakes so you can avoid wasting time, discoveries that lead to wins, and methods that support long term success as a creator.
This section is where I share what I’ve been working on with Explore to Thrive Blog since the last newsletter. My goal is to be transparent about the process. And also to give a real sense of what building a creator business actually looks like.
For this week’s newsletter, I am skipping the usual progress tracker format.
The accomplishments I made this week need a dedicated issue as it’s going to be detailed and insightful. Basically, I’ll be breaking down the anatomy of my blog posts where I feature infographics like maps. I’ll explain how I came up with that format, purpose of each part, and so on. Subscribe now so you do not miss next week’s issue!
But yeah, as planned, I wrapped up two blog posts. The maps are done too, though I have a few small edits to make before I publish them. For example, I need to put the actual links to the posts and pages under my Bohol Travel project on the map QR codes.
For the upcoming days until you receive the next issue of this newsletter, I’ll be taking a break from blogging because a few friends and I are heading up north for four days to celebrate our friend getting married. We’re also gonna kick back at a UNESCO World Heritage Site and chill along the coast while we’re there.
That means I won’t have any major blogging updates to share next week. That said, definitely stay tuned for the post I’m dropping! The wait is gonna be so worth it. That’s a wrap for this week, and thanks for reading as always.
Hiraya Manawari.
Ciao.
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