Archives for August 2009

This past week I read a number of posts in which bloggers discussed how long they would continue blogging and so I thought that it made sense to revisit my post about why some blogs fail.

I still maintain that one of two key elements must be present for bloggers to make it for the long haul, financial incentives and or personal satisfaction. Most bloggers will not make any significant cash from blogging so the bottom line will come back to whether they enjoy it or not.

Why Some Blogs Fail

My blogging friend LB and I had a brief discussion on Twitter regarding why some blogs last and others don’t. On a side note be sure to read his post on Hummus, see Benji, I am working on that Google page ranking. 😉

Anyhoo, he turned me onto this article from the New York Times called: Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest, or When The Thrill of Blogging is Gone. The question/topic of our tweeting was about why this happens and what it takes to survive. Before we get into that let’s take a look at an excerpt from the article.

“Like Mrs. Nichols, many people start blogs with lofty aspirations — to build an audience and leave their day job, to land a book deal, or simply to share their genius with the world. Getting started is easy, since all it takes to maintain a blog is a little time and inspiration. So why do blogs have a higher failure rate than restaurants?

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.

Judging from conversations with retired bloggers, many of the orphans were cast aside by people who had assumed that once they started blogging, the world would beat a path to their digital door.” [Emphasis in bold is mine J.B.]

If you want to be a successful blogger and be around for the long haul than you need one of two things to happen. Blogging has to be profitable or a passion. If you are lucky than you receive both.

When people ask me for advice on how to start a blog I always begin the conversation with a question, “Why do you want to start blogging?” If their answer is that they want to become rich and famous and hope that blogging will provide a platform for that I wish them good luck and ask them if they have really thought it out.

Do they have a plan? What is the blog going to be about? What blogging platform do they intend to use, WordPress, Typepad etc? What is the name of their blog, have they secured the domain name etc?

These aren’t hard questions to come up with. They don’t require any real insight or expertise to develop. There are a million sites that ask and answer these questions. A million sites that tell you they can help you use the net to get rich.

Most bloggers won’t ever make much money. Chances are they won’t spend much time on any in developing a marketing plan. They won’t really expend much effort on making it work. They’ll dip their toes in and decide that it takes work and continue because they like it or just give up.

That is why I say that it takes passion. You have to enjoy this. You have to get something more out of it than just the hope that you might make a buck at it. Because it is like anything else, if you like doing it than chances are you’ll stick with it.

At least that is what I think. What about you?

If you are one of the 17 long time readers you know that periodically I recycle old posts and use them again. What you may not know is the methodology that I use in choosing what to run again so here is a brief explanation.

Sometimes I’ll rerun a post because I happen to think that it is good enough to merit additional exposure and or it ties in nicely with a current topic.

At the moment I find myself in the midst of a pseudo crisis so as I work through the various elements that I find troubling it makes sense to revisit some old posts and see how they hold up.

I wrote the post below on January 1, 2006. I think that it has held up pretty well, although I should add that I am still asking myself a lot of the same questions. Maybe there are no good answers to them.

Blog Questions We Ask Ourselves

The title of this post is a bit presumptuous because I am assuming that I am not the only blogger to ask these questions, or maybe I am.

1) If you are an anonymous blogger would the loss of your anonymity stop you from blogging? Golda Leah touched upon this in her post today and many other bloggers have dealt with it.

My own anonymity has been compromised and I simply refuse to stop writing because this is outlet means a lot to me. I am appreciative of the community I have become a part of and happy that I have been given the opportunity to learn.

But there is no doubt that the removal of the veil changes a blogger’s approach. What do you think?

2) Many blogs have regulars, you know they are the commenters that show up on most if not all of the posts. Sometimes those commenters disappear. Do you wonder where they went? Do you wonder if they think that your blog has jumped the shark, if you upset them or if there is some other explanation for why they have forsaken you.

3) Do you ever wonder what the shelf life of your blog is? That is, how long will you be able to keep you going/how long do you want to keep going?

I readily admit to all of these, but I have to say that I my smallest concern is how long I can keep this up. I don’t have a problem coming up with content. The big question is how much of my evening I want to dedicate to this.

If you enjoyed this or are curious to read my other rambling remarks about blogging try reviewing the posts on the blogging drop down menu such as

Blogging for Ego, For Experience, For What
Do you Have Blog Envy?
How Many Blogs Do You Read?
Blog Regulars
The Most Time Consuming Part of Blogging
Obsessed With the Blogroll
Blog Disappointment
Commenting on Comments
Anonymous Blogging- Pulling Back The Curtain