There comes a time in many blogger’s lives when they are faced with the decision of whether to let a blog die or whether to continue with it. This week I want to explore the why and how of letting blogs die. You see there are many great resources around on how to launch a blog successfully (here’s my blogging for beginners resource) but very little is written on successfully ending a blog.
The idea of a successful blog death might seem a little strange but looking at the numbers of blog’s that are inactive around the blogosphere – I suspect this resources will be as relevant as all the blog launching posts.
Today I’ll start this series with a look at some of the common reasons ‘why’ blogs die. The list could be quite long I’m sure but if I had to identify the main 4 reasons that I regularly see for blogs ending this is how I’d sum it up.
1. Quick Death – Often this point comes just a few weeks into a blog’s life as the initial excitement of the new project wears off and as the reality of what it is going to take to maintain it hits home. It also comes when the realisation that only a handful of people (if anyone) is reading the blog and that it could take quite a long time before the fame and fortune that they’d dreamt of is a reality.
2. Life Crowds the Blog Out – Sometimes a blogger lasts longer than the initial few weeks and the decision comes as a result of other life factors crowding out the blog. We all lead busy lives and quite often when the stress or demands of life rise, one of the first things to slip off our radar is the blog. Posting that was daily slips to once or twice a week at first and we tell ourselves we’ll get back to it when we’re a little less busy – but the reality is that before we know it the only posts we write are explanations of why we haven’t been blogging and that we’ll be back to normal soon.
3. Blogger Burn Out – A common scenario for bloggers who’ve been at it for a while is that they simply burn themselves out and/or become disillusioned with their blog (or even blogging in general). This can come as a result of the criticism of readers (or other bloggers), a bout of bloggers block or simply because they’ve over extended themselves with too many projects or by the size of the topic that they’ve been trying to cover.
4. Death of a Niche – Sometimes it’s not the blogger who burns out but the niche itself. We live in a world that travels at a pretty frantic pace and as a result trends come and go – some more quickly than others. Sometimes a niche can come and go so quickly that while it seems like the ideal topic for a blog it’s almost over before you start it. The result is having little to write about that is relevant and having very few people searching for information on the topic.
Of course there are other types of blog deaths – they happen every day for a variety of reasons. I’m sure that most of us have had a blog we’ve written (or read) die on us – feel free to share the ‘why’ of it in comments.
Tomorrow I’ll write a post about some of the factors a blogger might want to consider when deciding whether to let a blog die or not and the following day will give some tips on ‘how’ to let a blog die successfully.
