Where Have All the Bloggers Gone?
By Terry Heath · Print This Article
Everything might be going along fine, then one morning you wake up and just don’t want to do it anymore. The same blog which used to be your pride and joy, where you watched its statistics improve like an over-protective mother, now feels like just another nagging chore. You would delete the whole thing if you hadn’t invested so much time already. Nobody told you it would be like this.
It’s not an uncommon feeling. Statistics indicate roughly 98% of all blogs fail. Very recently the popular make-money-online blog John Cow considered selling and One Man’s Goal was listed in a SitePoint auction.
A growing list of bloggers have sold out in the last year. Not counting those who have considered selling, or listed and pulled out, several new and established blogs have recently changed owners:
Selling an established site can be profitable, and flipping websites is a growing niche, but can you keep your motivation and develop your blog enough someone might be interested in buying?
Blog Gone It
One common reason sellers give for selling is they have a new project which needs their time, finances, or both. It’s the blogosphere version of a Dear John letter:
Dear Blog,
I just don’t have time for you anymore. Can we still be friends?
Sincerely,
Me
You hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth about a few of these sales. They say, “Don’t sell! Treat your blog as an investment and hire writers to post for you.” But have you really ever tried to get good writers who weren’t already swamped writing their own blogs?
It seems the prospect of making money online with a blog has drawn many into the world of online publishing, but some may not have the staying power to see their blogs through. Others simply take on too many blogs and find it hard to keep each of them current and interesting. These bloggers thought it would be easy; just write a few posts a day and you’re set.
The B-Myth
In honor of Michael Gerber’s business classic, I’ll call this phenomenon “The B-Myth”. Someone gets an idea for a blog and thinks it’s a pretty good idea . . . and maybe it is. So they set it up and learn a little about WordPress or Blogger. Suddenly they call themselves a blogger, when in fact that blogger really only existed in the moment their blog was conceived.
What they didn’t realize is:
- Blogging is writing
- Blogging is marketing
- Blogging is doing the same thing over and over
And possibly the most disheartening fact of all, blogging success doesn’t happen overnight.
So you have a blog. Nobody else wants to write it for you. Nobody wants to buy it for what you believe it’s worth. Sometimes it feels like nobody even wants to read it. What do you do next?
Is Consolidation an Option?
Maybe it’s time to consolidate your blogs. In some cases the thought we need different blogs for different niches can be misguided. If you are able to outsource your content, then it might be feasible. But otherwise, multiple blogs can be a real burden and you might be spreading yourself thin.
Could you write and promote one consolidated blog better than several individual blogs? You might be surprised what “niches” can be combined to the enrichment of both. It might also be worth considering why you want to blog on multiple topics; are you truly an expert in so many fields? Maybe the real thing holding you back is vanity.
So if you’ve been around here before, you probably noticed some changes. I recently purchased a blog called SEONoobs (it’s in the list above) thinking I could make it a multi-author blog. I had been blogging awhile and knew the problems of keeping up multiple blogs, but I thought since SEONoobs was pretty successful already, others would like the opportunity to guest blog or become a regular contributor.
I was wrong!
While I’m somewhat knowledgeable about SEO, it’s not my strength. Here was a blog where I had invested a good chunk of change, but the font of my SEO expertise was only a trickle compared to the steady stream of new content this blog needed. Flipping the blog didn’t seem a good answer either; it was too soon.
Obviously you’re looking at the result. I’ve broadened the focus of SEONoobs to include marketing and blogging. It’s really a case of biting the bullet, but I don’t think SEONoobs would have sustained interest as a SEO blog if all I ended up writing about was SEO contests and tweaking your website.
In the long run I know consolidation of my efforts and knowledge will make this a more helpful blog, and isn’t that what good blogging is all about?
I’ll keep you posted on how it all turns out. If nothing else, it might be interesting for you to watch what happens!
It seems to me that blogging is just like a lot of things in life…easy and exciting to start, but difficult to stay consistent over a long period of time. Great post!
-Cameron
Cameron Schaefer’s last blog post..What I Wish I Had Known About Writing A Book
Thanks Cameron,
I think all the get-rich-quick blogging schemes do a real disservice to many new bloggers. For others, we just tend to bite off more than we can chew . . . and the result is indigestion!
I had a great idea, started the Blog, and found it as only a good idea to me.
I work on many things and just adding one more to drive traffic to was more than I really wanted, I guess. This was a great post. Thanks,
Marianne
Thanks for telling it like it is, Terry.
We all start out with high hopes and plan on being the next BIG Authority Blogger. Then once we’ve sorta learned how not to blow-up the site everytime we try to change something, we start to notice that the topic we think is so crucial doesn’t thrill the internet that way we thought it should.
It’s at that point we have to make a decision. We have to decide whether we feel our niche is important enough to continue to work at, even when the visitors don’t arrive daily by the thousands.
There have been times when I thought I should sell my main site, not because I’m not interested in the topic, but because I feel my topic is so important that it needs a more knowledgeable marketer to get the message out.
There is so much to learn and do! Phew! I guess all I can do is hang in there.
BTW, I love the idea of merging, but I can’t see how Education Reform and Animal Rescue can be combined. Any ideas?
Brennan
Brennan Kingsland’s last blog post..Ponder Our Miniature Earth!
While I’ve been sorely neglecting my own blog, I really don’t see a reason to outright quit or drop it all together. At least in my case, my blog is a huge traffic getter. What website doesn’t need that?
Anyway, great post.
Website Design’s last blog post..Get Free Inbound Links Using Your Blog Feed
@Marianne: It’s easy to get discouraged. If you believe in an idea it’s best to go with your heart. For example, my head isn’t happy that I combined SEONoobs with eBuz’d because SEONoobs was doing so well. But my heart says it’s the best answer in the long run. We’ll see who is right!
@Brennan: I relate to not feeling you know the niche well enough to properly sustain a particular blog. That’s how I felt about SEO even though I am more familiar than most bloggers. I’m still primarily a writer and marketer.
Yeah, I don’t know about merging your two topics either
:
Animal Education Reform? Darn those dog trainers anyway, pulling on our collars so hard . . .
Education Rescue? Save those kids from school . . .
The problem is I don’t think the potential readership for either topic would be able to read!
Yeah Terry,
It’s all true. I went through the attempt to keep a blog as many others, and now this blog is just hanging over there… At least I have some backlinks from it
Misha
Hi Terry,
I know where you’re coming from! I’m just getting tired of dealing with it. Trying to keep up with my ezine and getting one post a week up on my blog is getting hard. My motivation has gone out the window, I’m sorry to say. I’ve managed to get up to about 100 visitors a day consistently, but that’s not enough traffic to really bring in any income, so it’s hard to stay at it. What the get-rich folks don’t tell you is that you can easily put in 80 hours a week and not have a lot to show for it at the end!
I’m considering a slightly different direction that hopefully will be more lucrative than what I’m doing now. I do have a lot of back links and I think I can make my blog work for me more than it is now. Plus I’m cutting back on the amount of time I’m spending on the computer and making time for other activities so I don’t feel so fried.
Thanks for your post. You’ve said what a lot of us are feeling right now!
Darlene Norris’s last blog post..Do You Speak Feline-ese?
Hey Terry,
The B-Myth phenomenon is very comparable to the E-Myth. There’s more to blogging to just getting a good idea and think that everything else will fall in place. You’ve put the finger on the really issues which make the 98% of all blogs fail.
Cheers
Ephrem
I started a blog back in the summer of 2007 as the “hub” of my internet marketing activities. I can really relate to what you wrote above regarding blogging as time-consuming etc.
I found that I was putting undo pressure on myself to perform and lately I’ve “lightened up” and that appears to have helped with my attitude, although I admit to being less productive of late.
Like many of us, I have a “serious” full-time job and other obligations, but I have realistic goals with what I want to achieve online and I know that it takes time, perseverance, and ongoing learning and implementing.
I am going to stay the course for now!
Mark McCullagh’s last blog post..What Do You Do When You Feel Like Giving Up?
@MDD: Have you thought about converting your unused blog into a static website? You could still use blog software, just take the dates off. It could be a sort of article directory and you wouldn’t be expected to keep posting on a regular basis.
@Darlene: The point you make is, I think, a real source of discouragement for many. The return on investment seems very low for most blogs unless they have some sort of profit-making backend . . . actually, I’m putting together a post about that right now.
I’ve enjoyed your cat blog and hope it doesn’t lose its current feeling (feline-g?) . . . but I also know you have to make it worth all the effort.
Excellent point about cutting back on the time spent in front of the computer. I totally understand the fried feeling. Sometimes I feel like a zombie under some eSpell:
“Must . . . read . . . email . . . check . . . stats . . . write . . . post . . . ARG!”
@Ephrem: Michael Gerber got it right. Just like the “Entrepreneur” exists only in a moment then the real business of running a business sets in, the blogger has a similar inspiration then later realizes there is so much more to a blog than blogging.
Terry, thanks for your advice - but it’s on blogger.com, so it cannot be converted. Either keep it or delete it. This is not a big deal really, cause this one was really an experiment if I can run the blog at all - as every IM guru tells me I have to. Well, I don’t, and I’m doing fine without a blog
Misha
I’m working on a blog on a related topic, Terry and propose linking to this article. BTW the 98% hyperlink at the start of the entry is throwing up a 404 page. You might want to check that.
Jim Murdoch’s last blog post..Confident writing
@MDD: You can convert any of the Blogger templates to look more like a static site (I know of a good tutorial if you’re interested), but if it’s not something you want then why bother?
I disagree with the guru’s who tell you a blog is necessary. They are a way to easily add pages to your site, which seems to help at the search engines, and are great if you update frequently, but otherwise a static site will usually do the job.
@Jim: You’re welcome to link to any of my posts, anytime. Thanks for letting me know about the broken link; I see what I did, now I just have to restore the source. LOL
I don’t know if I would agree that they all fail, per se, even if 98% do cease to be. Taking different directions and leaving things behind is pretty common practice in the business world, if a blog has served its purpose and the writer no longer needs to post is that a failure?
I only ask because as a brand new blogger (monday was the first post ever) I really don’t want to enter into something I think is a great medium for expression with the looming statistic of my eventual failure. But maybe that’s why I ended up with a free blog with more of a hobby feel to see what I can do.
Also Terry, I am very glad that you have expanded this site to include marketing with SEO, because frankly I don’t see a difference. In fact, my eventual goal is to find a way to become more knowledgable about SEO then further my education and try to teach an MBA level marketing class based on SEO/SMO/everything else. So you definitely have a loyal reader of your targeted audience.
Josh Board’s last blog post..Hillary’s Election = Judgment Day?
Josh,
You’re right the word might not be “fail”. I lumped together all the reasons a blog might become inactive or abandoned. I suppose you could look at it the other way too, 2% of the blogs currently being counted are still active, and that’s still a huge number of “successes”.
Thanks for the encouragement, too. I agree SEO is a form of marketing, but I needed a little more room to spread my wings or I ran the real risk of running out of inspiration for my topic!
@Mark,
I just pulled your comment out of the spam folder (again, I think!). I’m sorry I didn’t get to respond earlier. Your point about other responsibilities, such as a job, is so true. Maybe if all our blogs made regular income right off we’d all be probloggers! But that just isn’t the reality, as you know.
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