Why Your Blog Will Fail – Part I
March 24th, 2008Why Your Blog Will Fail
Part I
Predetermined Fate?
A few days ago I clicked over to one of my favorite blogs – a very successful blog by most definitions, with thousands of visitors and hundreds of comments per day – only to find that it has just recently been shut down.
I was a bit surprised that this specific blog had ceased to exist after so many years of popular existence and many loyal readers.
While there are many reasons why a blog might shut down, most of those reasons can be prevented if you are aware of them ahead of time, or at least know what the common causes are.
First up…
Predetermined Fate?
The type of blog that you decide to write may very well have its fate predetermined before the first post is published.
No matter the topic, a new blog will generally fall within one of three categories: general-interest, niche, or personal. Each of these might be further subcategorized, but would still fall within one of those primary categories.
Each of the three blog types have their own pros and cons, which will eventually help or hinder the blogger. As a note of record, this blogger has some number of each of these types, so I am speaking from experience.
The general-interest blogs, such as Blog About Nothing, by their very nature cover many, many, topics. Covering a wide-range of topics allows the blogger more natural freedom to change the mood of the posts as the seriousness, or silliness, of the topics change.
The good thing about a general-interest blog is that there will eventually be a post that will be of interest to the reader. That’s also the downside – just because the reader is interested in the topic covered today, does not mean they will be interested in the topic discussed tomorrow. As-such, they may or may not return. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some bloggers attempt to focus on a specific niche topic. Unlike the general-interest blog, these will cover a very specific topic – such as a certain hobby, musical instrument, or poetry.
This might seem easier at first, because once a visitor reads a well-written post about that specific niche, they will likely return again since the topic already interests them. On the other hand, this drastically limits the topics which the blogger can cover. While it might initially appear very easy to write content about bulldog puppies, for example, he or she will at some point in time have written practically everything there is to write about those puppies, their history, future, breeding, feeding, and training. Then what?
Lastly is the personal blog. This type of blog might talk in great detail about the blogger’s family, children, or their own adventurous life. This is also the most common type to find around the Internet, just sitting there with two or three posts, all dated sometime around three years ago.
These bloggers usually learn sooner rather than later that most people just aren’t as interested in their children as they are. And, to be honest, the blogger should be a bit uncomfortable if they are. But, if the purpose is really to share this with close family and friends, and never really grow a larger audience, then this type of blog has its place.
However, this type of blogger also usually realizes that the task of writing and maintaining that blog is taking quite a bit of time away from the very subjects they’re writing about – either their children or themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a few bloggers that have actually done the personal blog quite well, and have captivated us as, even though we don’t know them personally. These are the master writers and storytellers.
A good writer can make a successful blog of any one of these types. But, no matter how easy it seems in the beginning, it’s going to get more difficult. That level of difficulty was determined long before it became apparent.
Conversely, a bad writer will eventually fail at any of the types described here. There’s far more to writing a successful blog than just pasting a bunch of words onto a page. Anyone can string a bunch of words together, but does it mean anything?
Up Next: Why Your Blog Will Fail Part II – Under Pressure
