Where have all the bloggers gone?
Seems these days we have less and less bloggers around the community. Over the past few days I was going and moderating all the links that lead to dead blogs over at Blog Engage and to my surprise I ran into a large amount of dead and non existent blogs.
Over 30 percent of the blogs submitted at blog engage were either dead or no longer active. Some of the coolest bloggers I ever seen haven’t’ posted in more than a year.
Where are all the bloggers?
This is a good and relative question to ask ourselves. It wasn’t even a year ago we had bloggers coming out of the woodworks. Today I sit here and can’t even find one of those bloggers to this day. Have the bloggers lost all hope? Have they lost all blogging interest? Perhaps the assumed blogging was going to be fun and easy.
So here we are a year later and look at this. News flash blogging isn’t easy. Blogging takes time, dedication, commitment and education. So the bloggers start coming in by the dozen and the committed bloggers (us) sit back, blog, and watch the rest fail. It’s not that we get joy out of watching bloggers fail at their blogs. It’s rather depressing to see such a wave of failure in the blogosphere.
How to ensure blogging success?
Simply put there’s nothing you can do to ensure the success of your blog. We have suggestions and measures you can take to control the longevity of your blog but nothing is set in stone saying you will become successful.
The sad truth was presented to me when I was cleaning out the old and dead links at blog engage. Bloggers are a dying bread and there’s nothing we can do about it.
I’m not trying to preach or say I’m better than anyone. I’m simply stating the facts and the reality of this industry. People like the idea and concept of blogging but the sudden realization of how hard blogging is makes the majority of bloggers give up or move on to something else.
Don’t base the success of your blog on comments or earnings. When you start blogging for the money your done. Rarely do bloggers make any money with blogging. Sure a few bloggers managed to make some decent coin but let me stress to you this is few and far in between. Blogging is not about making money, working is about making money and blogging is not working. Some bloggers make a living from blogging and in that case my statement is incorrect. For the majority of bloggers what I speak today is the true.
In general there is no happy story here. Bloggers are a dying bread and it’s sad but nothing can be done.
Please can someone tell me? Where have all the bloggers gone?
Thanks,
Brian
That is a good questions. Where did all the bloggers go? I am still trying to figure that out. I just try to keep in touch with my followers and fellow bloggers. Every now and then, we just need to know that someone else is still out there.
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Brian,
i have noticed this as well. Many bloggers that I followed and tracked when I first started are no longer around. Some have sold their blogs and others have just left them to collect dust. I always have to chuckle when I read in blog forums about how saturated the blogging niche is, or the seo niche is, etc… Sur there are a lot of blogs in every category but in my opinion there is always room for more dedicated bloggers to join in. Considering the majority of bloggers quit after three months, there is always room for those that are serious, dedicated and like you said, understand that this aint easy..
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Good point Brian. There is always room to standout.
You said it. I think a lot of people blog for money. They come out of the gate on fire, but then sizzle out. I’m sure the economy may play into as well. You may not have that free cash to pay for hosting every month. I’ve also seen a few people that have never submitted anything the B.E. They online post ad links. So it is a combination of factors that have caused people to leave.
Many bloggers lack dedication. Almost all the blogs that i use to read are no dead, I really can’t give a reason why but i would like to believe that sponsorship is one of the reasons why some blogs die young.
So many people have made making money with a blog sound easy, and so a huge number of people create blogs and then give up when they find how much time and effort that has to be put into blogging for them to make even a dollar. Yesterday I was brainstorming for a name for my new blog and I found that the name is already taken by a blog with two posts from January of 2010. It’s cluttered with ads, so obviously they were hoping to make some money off of it. So much for that idea, huh?
Other times, it’s life that gets in the way of blogging. I haven’t been able to invest much time in blogging for about a month because things have been crazy for me in my life. Blogging—even just for the fun of it—can take up too much time and that’s why some people quit.
I think it is mostly a case of over expectation. People see successful blogger making money online but what they don’t realize the amount of hard work they have put it to come this far. Also it is easy to give up when you don’t see the results, although I make a good living from my various websites now in the beginning it was very hard and there were few times I thought of quitting. But I persisted and found success and now I write and write with proper keyword research
.
Blogging is something that many people think they can do, and perhaps they do it for a while, and then they realize how much time and energy it takes with little or no return for many months perhaps years and they just quit. I think being a content curator is the next best area of opportunity now.
I think many new bloggers get started thinking that blogging was easy and people would just line up at the door for your content.. this isn’t the case.
Not only does it take a lot of time, research and thought to write the posts, but you need to ensure proper attention is paid to photo and link credits. The work doesn’t end there, you have to market yourself to get people to read your thoughts, plus learn design skills and pick up technical skills as well.
I think life gets in the way some times for some very well intentioned individuals. I have had a few periods of my blog when I just couldn’t be consistent, it is always there waiting for me like a great friend. Well almost always, not the last few days however…
I am starting to see a lot of my favorite blogs slow down or disappear without notice. Some of them I know just got bored or picked a topic they shouldn’t have been in.
I know I thought about quitting once or twice and that was mostly to busy to think about working on it. Now I mostly concentrate on writing articles for my site and several others.
I found that mixing it up a little and not spend all my time writing, marketing, or doing both at the same time. My schedule is to busy, so I break it up write a little a few times a week and market on other days…Or at least I try and do it that way.