from Miles Lennon
The home run scenario for blogging is incredibly alluring — thousands of ravenous fans fawning over your next thought-provoking or comedic masterpiece — but time and time again I fail to meet these expectations or manage them more appropriately. I enter the same cycle each time:
Blog Lifecycle
1) Euphoric moment of inspiration
2) Pseudo-maniacal and self-indulgent perusing of domains
3) Careful consideration of theme and design
4) The inaugural post – “Hello world!”
5) The 2-4 post honeymoon phase
6) Waning and changing interests
7) Feelings of desperation and apathy from low engagement
Inevitable abandonment
It turns out that this cycle may not be uncommon. Surveys have shown that 95% of blogs are abandoned within 120 days and 60-80% of them abandoned within the first month. I’m not 100% certain if these statistics are still valid today, but I have a hunch they are or perhaps even worse. Many of us simply don’t have the time, energy, passion and stamina it takes to build an online audience. Worse still, we’ve entered an age of conspicuousness in which blogs gone unnoticed are blogs worth abandoning. Put those two together and you find yourself stuck with massive inertia.
This hasn’t been my experience and certainly as time has gone on I ind I want to post more and more. Sure there have been days where it has been a real struggle to write anything, or even cut and paste something from somewhere else. Most of the time however I find blogging energising, rewarding and mostly fun.
