Today, I feel a bit sad.
Having decided to start posting regularly to Cupcakes and Cadenzas again I was looking through the blogs that I have listed on my 'Blogs I Love Reading' page as well as all the blogs I subscribe to in Google Reader and it was what I found there that made me sad.
A large number of the blogs have been abandoned. No updates, no warnings...nothing! The bloggers have just given up and the really sad part is that many of them were well established blogs with followers and really interesting content but, for whatever reason, they haven't been updated for a long time. It made me wonder how many other abandoned blogs there are out there in the Blogosphere. Thousands, maybe even millions.
Blogging is a funny thing. Pro-blogging and business blogging aside, a huge number of blogs, as you know, are written by people who want to share their hobbies, day to day lives, photographs, love of books etc. etc. They start off well but it
is difficult to maintain a blog long term and it can feel like an uphill struggle so eventually some people decide to give up. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes it's because life gets in the way and there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done
and find time to blog as well. Others give up when they realise that no-one is commenting or even reading their blogs and they feel that they are wasting their time. The thing about that is, with over 200,000,000 blogs out there - if you don't take the time to tell people about your blog and direct them to it, how do you honestly expect them to find it? Your blog could the most amazing blog in the world with amazing design and fabulous content but if people don't know about it then you're wasting your time. You must promote your blog. Another major reason for blogs being abandoned is that people start out blogging about a topic that they are interested in and they love but they aren't passionate about. It's easy to find things to talk about at first but after a while it becomes difficult to come up with new and interesting posts. No matter how much you love a topic, if you're not passionate about it then you will never maintain enough enthusiasm to keep a blog going long term. I speak from experience here. There are at least two (maybe three) blogs out there that I have abandoned due to not being passionate about the topic.
It is sad though, when you see a great blog just lying there doing nothing. It reminds me a bit of those aircraft graveyards where retired planes go to rest before they are broken up. Some of the ones that I looked at yesterday had a 'final' post in which the blogger stated that they would be giving up blogging either for an undetermined length of time or permanently. Others just stopped! I read back through some of the posts and thought about all the hard work that went into creating them. Would it be possible for those bloggers to write maybe one short post say - once a month...just to keep the blog ticking over. Or perhaps they could look to changing the niche of the blog if they've run out of steam on the things they write about.
I do understand though that sometimes things just come to a natural end and perhaps they've simply decided that blogging isn't for them and it's time to let go.
Whatever the reason, it still makes me feel a bit sad.
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