Photo courtesy of Flickr user Chris Gin
I’ve been blogging before it was called blogging. That’s a long time.
During my time I’ve seen countless blogs fall by the wayside. Life gets in the way for a blogger and posts become infrequent and eventually stop. Sometimes blogs will unexpectedly end with a farewell post.
I didn’t start seriously following blogs til I moved down to the DC area and I’ve seen quite a few of them shut down in the past year. There appears to be a sort of blog hump or wall that we all hit after a year or two of blogging. A point where some blogs keep on chuggin’ and some decide to call it quits.
Why is there a blog hump? Well it’s different for some and perhaps for others they will never hit it but here are a few reasons based on what I’ve seen:
You Lose Your Purpose
Ask yourself why are you blogging? Why are you sharing your life with The Internet? There maybe a point you can’t answer that question and you find yourself lost and you get tired of blogging. Just like any new hobby or habit, you start to question whether it is worth your time and there comes a point that answer is, “no blogging isn’t worth my time anymore.”
For some there comes a point where your purpose of blogging fulfills itself. I recently interviewed a blogger who wrote about her dating life and search for a significant other. Her blog is full of great dating stories and adventures. I asked her what would happen when she finds that special someone and she told me she probably would stop writing- she’d be out of things to say.
Starting Over at 24 was a blog started after when a man’s first relationship ended after six years. The blog itself then ended after he found the next love of his life and his blog tale had a happy ending.
Whether you are writing because you backpacking through Africa, training for a marathon, or just moved to a new city; if the reason you blog doesn’t grow and evolve as you do it’s doomed for an eventual conclusion.
You Forget Who You Are Writing For
It’s very hard to get caught up with page views, comment counts, and other metrics that says somebody is reading your work. You feel this euphoria that you have some sort of popularity and when your audience goes away you get tired of it all.
When this happens you have to remember not only why you are writing but who you are writing for- is it your friends & family? your portfolio? yourself?
When I started blogging in middle school I knew nobody read the stupid little Geocities page I kept up. Now maybe three people read me. If nobody reads me tomorrow I can always remember that I was putting my opinions on paper long before anybody tracked back to me because it was for myself. This blog started as a petty journal in my teenage years and has grown as a place for me to document and help shape my opinions and views of Social Media, life, during my on-going Quarter Life Crisis years.
You Overextend Yourself
If you want to start blogging by all means you should blog as soon as you can and get into the habit of it. However you should also think about your time commitment once the honeymoon period is over. I’ve seen lots of blogs post daily for two-three weeks then ramp down. I know the end is near when posts start reading, “I haven’t blogged in so long- I will soon!”
Figure out a happy medium with your posting schedule- something you can easily maintain when life gets a tad busier than usual. Don’t feel like you have to write EVERY day- as long as you are writing great content that’s what matters.
Do you think that there’s a blog hump? How have you overcome it?
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