Normally I visit any where from 75 to 100 blogs a day. Some I find through the many social media outlets I utilize. Others I find while googling a particular topic. The blogosphere is gi-normous. There are approximately 112 million blogs in cyperspace. According to Technorati, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) created every day. Staggering numbers, huh?
I wonder what the stats are on the number of blogs that have been deserted by their webmasters. So many of the really great blogs I visit haven't been updated in years. Yes, years. It's only because of the popularity of some of these particular blog's posts that their pages are still indexed by Google.
What made these seemingly successful bloggers just quit? Maybe time, motivation, frustration - all these seem like plausible reasons. I was just curious. I know everyone's experiences and reasons are different.
According to most bloggers, these are the main reasons blogs fail.
Bloggers -
1. Get discouraged that they aren’t seeing the results they want and shut down the blog
2. Don’t market or promote themselves or their blog; both online and offline
3. Don’t have time to keep blogging and maintaining their site
4. Spread themselves too thin in terms of blog focus and end up losing their audience
5. Don’t maintain a steady posting schedule and let weeks or months go by before posting
6. Run out of topic or post ideas/get burned out
7. Let harsh criticisms and negative comments get to them, creates low morale and lack of confidence
8. Start a blog about something they are not passionate about and eventually they just stop caring
9. Fail to provide unique and/or valuable content OR censoring to the point where the “voice” is killed from the blog
10. Try to over monetize something to the point where it’s just ridiculous
11. Only venture into blogging to make money
12. Lose patience and want immediate results
13. Advertise or endorse crappy products - thus losing their audiences trust
14. Don't analyze the traffic to their blog to find out what is working and what isn't
15. Don't find a way to incorporate blogging into their lives that healthy and beneficial for the blogger and the blogger's family
16. Try to use blogs to sell something instead of using them for credibility and trust
17. Sites are too cluttered; causing too much of a distraction
18. Cater to others and don't allow their unique voices to be heard
19. Write poorly. You don't have to be Ernest Hemingway but please...
20. Get burned out! - not just due to lack of ideas...some bloggers simply CRASH AND BURN! They charge in with guns blazing and one day realize they just don't want to do it anymore.
Certainly this list isn't exclusive. There are as many reasons blogs fail as there are grains of sand. These are some of the reasons I really could relate to.
Is this your first try at blogging or have you been down this road before? What are some other reasons you feel blogs fail?
