Changes to this Newsletter and Reactiving the Bosskey

TL;DR: I'm consolidating my scattered content efforts back to Beehiiv after experimenting with WordPress, Substack, and my own domain. SEO is dying, social media is exhausting, and I'm rethinking how to build an audience in 2026.

I started posting on my old blog and launched cg-boss.com in 2025 as a response to social media chaos—endless algorithm changes, attention scarcity, and feeling invisible online.

But things got messy. I experimented with Beehiiv, moved to Substack, then watched Substack pivot into another social media platform. So I'm back on Beehiiv, consolidating my blog content here.

Traffic disappeared. My original WordPress blog (cgboss.com) isn't getting Google traffic anymore. I'm not sure if it's the domain change, Google's algorithm updates, or something else I'm missing. Posts that used to rank are now buried. The analytics are bleak.

SEO is broken. I spent money on ads thinking it would jumpstart things. It didn't stick. Traffic spiked for a day, then vanished. With ChatGPT, Gemini, and DeepSeek answering questions directly in search results, traditional blogs feel obsolete. People don't click through anymore—they get their answers from AI summaries. How much time is left before AI search (AEO/GEO) makes content discovery completely irrelevant?

Attention is scarce. I wish I could just write and have people find it organically. But that's not how things work anymore. Social media demands constant engagement—posting, replying, building threads, staying visible in the feed. I hate it. It drains time and energy that should go into actually making things. And it feels like pay-to-win now—organic reach is dead unless you're already big or willing to pay for ads.

Beehiiv SEO on the free plan? I'm not sure how good it is, but some articles do surface alongside my old Medium posts when I search my own name. That's something. At least it's indexed. But is anyone actually finding this content? Hard to say.

YouTube is probably the best option for building a personal brand and promoting games. Gaming channels with strong personalities can actually sell things—courses, merch, their own games—if you can build an audience. The algorithm favors longer watch times, and gaming content naturally generates engagement.

The only reason I'd invest in a personal brand (YouTube, socials) is as a hedge against AI commoditization. When anyone can create polished articles, tutorials, or graphics with AI, personal identity becomes the moat. You can't automate authenticity. People follow creators they trust, not faceless content mills.

But here's the problem: even video doesn't cut it anymore in an age of endless media feeds. TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels—everyone's competing for seconds of attention. And I'm not sure gaming content even monetizes well. Most of it is trailer promotion, dev logs, and commentary—not solving someone's specific problem the way a tutorial or business channel does. There's no clear product-market fit for indie dev content unless you're already established.

Worse: AI Avatars are coming. AI can already make content better than most influencers. Soon, AI-generated personalities with perfect delivery, unlimited stamina, and optimized engagement tactics will flood platforms. How do you compete with that?

Honestly, I dislike the word "content" or "content creation." It reduces everything to data. It doesn't reflect what I'm trying to do: make something meaningful that engages or inspires people through art and work. I'm not trying to optimize for watch time. I'm trying to share something real.

The only hedge against AI is your lived experience. AI can replicate style, tone, even expertise. But it can't replicate your specific journey—the failures, the breakthroughs, the weird decisions that led you to where you are now. That's the story people actually care about.

So I'm going deeper into my story and why I do what I do. Not as a marketing tactic, but because it's the only thing that feels authentic. The messy process of building games as a solo dev in SG. The frustrations of marketing. The tools I'm experimenting with. The philosophical questions about AI, creativity, and what it means to make something in 2025.

This isn't about positioning or personal branding in the corporate sense. It's about being honest about the process and inviting people along for the ride.

I'm planning to consolidating everything here or re-post from my blog or Youtube. No more splitting content across WordPress, Medium, Substack, and social media. Beehiiv is now the single source of truth for my writing.

I'm reactivating this blog/newsletter as my primary hub, even if it's not the main traffic driver. Beehiiv recently announced new tools for creators building digital businesses, which gives me some SEO hope.

Why Beehiiv?

What this means:

The WordPress site (cg-boss.com) stays online as a portfolio and project hub, but it's no longer where I publish regularly. It's essentially a professional landing page and a signal to Google that I exist.

Why keep it at all?

Instead of using Patreon, I'm experimenting with paid tiers on Beehiiv for deeper game development insights:

Just some ideas for now.

I'm still on the fence about YouTube. The time investment is massive, and I'm not convinced it fits my workflow. But I recognize video might be necessary for:

If I do it, it'll be low-production, honest dev logs—not polished influencer content. Think more "this is what I'm working on and why it's hard" and less "10 tips to get wishlists."

I'm not abandoning social media entirely, but I'm done with performative engagement. New approach:

Is this sustainable? I don't know.

Can I build an audience without selling out to social media engagement traps? Probably not.

Will AI search kill independent content creators? Maybe.

But I'd rather experiment and fail on my own terms than disappear because I didn't try.

So here we are. Bosskey Unlocked Newsletter is back. Let's see where this goes.

If you're still reading this, thanks. It means something.