Then I just get tired of it all.. I knew that blogging was popular and met somebody that was landing over $3000 monthly by simply putting up a celebrity picture and asking if folks thought she had "gained weight" So I decided to give it a try…

I have made very little money but now it has become a bit of a passion in my spare time. But a little payout would be nice. To have 5 or 10 more years to make a little extra cash at it would be nice.

I totally agree with you. I think one complicating factor that you so far have not mentioned is that blogs are now being used as marketing tools. So a company may start one, realize it's really time intensive and then stop it. Or a book author might do the same.

From my personal perspective as a freelance writer and blogger, I only see an increase. In fact, blogging is probably one of the fastest growing aspects of the writing industry. So many newspapers are moving everything online, for instance. Today I'm writing three blogs. Two years ago I was doing nothing online. Nothing.

Nearly every mom I know has a blog, too. That was NOT the case 10 years ago. What I think is happening is that type of blogger and the type of blog is shifting. You're getting more women, more moms, more business people, etc. Perhaps the tech blogs are shrinking, but other blogs are growing. Somehow Technorati is not capturing this, but I would guess it has something to do with the way they find and track blogs and not with blogs actually going extinct.

Just my two cents. Great blog!

Alisa

Blogging as platform is huge part of blogging as type of writing. Form kinda defines content here.

And I don't really believe in greener grass of the past. I am online for a long time and only change I see is sites/blogs getting fatter. There are no "next big things" online in my opinion. Only trends and services that come and go.

Forgot to say in the article. I wasn't suggesting that those with blogspot or wordpress.com blogs work less or do not put as much effort into their blogs. It's just that, because they are free to setup, they are more likely to be abandoned.

Rarst – Nicholas was right in his article. Blogging can be two things : It can refer to the blogging platform (i.e. a type of Content Management System) or it can refer to a type of writing. In the early days blogging was more personal but, as I said, it has evolved since then.

With any free and new activity we see a massive uptake as critical mass kicks in, and then a dip towards plateauing of activity. Blogging is probably now finding its level and balancing out, with content proving king – as it has done for all other pages on the web.

Anyhow since I'm still blogging – http://urbansurvivalproject.blogspot.org and you're still blogging, and neither of us feels any vibe of our efforts disappearing into an unappreciative unknown, the blogosphere really can't be dying!

Blogging is just a type of site. Some blogs can be close and personal with their daily readership of one hundred. Some become distant and professional with their readership of one million.

So what? Blogging is just a type of site. It's accessible so there is naturally millions of failures. And it works so there is no possibility of blogs poofing from Internet.

A large percentage of these inactive 7.4 million blogs mentioned in the report must be blogspot and wpdotcom blogs.

When there are so much fluctuating and vague parameters, and the data is so huge, taking out the real and accurate picture is not easy.