6 Tips to Avoid Blog Abandonment

A recent survey by Technorati found that, of the 133 million blogs they had tracked since 2002, only 7.5 million had been updated within the past four months and, of those, only 1.5 million had been updated within the past 7 days.

This means that, of all the blogs Technorati has tracked, only 5.6% are active, even within the last four months, and only 1.1% are active within the past week.

In short, the vast majority of blogs are abandoned.

Blog abandonment can happen for many reasons. Some people have shifts in their personal life that prevent them from finding the time (why I had to abandon my personal blog), others lose interest in their topic, others suffer some form of catastrophic failure while some just move on to something else.

However, if you want your blog to be around for a few years to come, here are some suggestions to make sure you won’t abandon your blog once the going gets rough.

6. Get Paid Hosting

Though there are many wonderful blogs that are hosted on free services such as WordPress.com and Blogspot and many that have been around for a long time, it is still much easier to walk away from something you haven’t invested in.

If you are serious about blogging, you should look at getting your own domain and your own paid Web host. It only costs a few dollars per month for most bloggers and not only adds a great deal of professionalism to your site, but helps you stay focused.

Besides, when you have your own domain, you can make the site more personal to you, which makes you both more personally and financially invested in your site.

5. Blog in Private

Before starting a new blog, especially if you intend to make it a business of some variety, try blogging in private for a while. This has two functions:

1. Ensures Passion: It ensures that you have enough passion in your topic to survive the first few months, when traffic is likely to be almost non-existant.
2. Lays the Groundwork: This also works to have a stockpile of articles ready and live when your site goes online. This gives the search engines something to go through and new readers reason to stick around.

How many posts you you want before you go live will depend on your planned blogging. Typically though, you’ll want at least a month’s worth of posts live, more if you are posting infrequently. Just make sure you have enough to ensure your site looks “open” when you actually let the rest of the world in.

4. Blog on a Schedule

Here’s a tip that every blogger should know, put your posts up on a schedule. It doesn’t matter if your posts are daily, weekly or something in between, having your posts go up in a timely manner makes it easier for your readers to follow along and for you to keep writing. It becomes a part of your routine.

How often should you write? At least weekly is best, but one of the best solutions is to figure out how many posts you can do per day/week and then schedule to do only half that. This allots you time for email, research, redesigns and other blog-related projects.

If you find you can write more posts, you can speed up the schedule later. It is much easier to add more posts per week than to scale back.

3. Forward Post When Possible

Most people have to be in a mood to write. As such, it’s a good idea to work with those moods. When you feel like writing, write a lot and forward post it to your site. Not only does this help you make the most of your inspiration, but it also ensures your site will be active even if you don’t want or can’t write.

This helps you avoid missing a post, even when a more serious personal need arises, and it makes it easier to get back into writing for your site when you return. Many find that, once their schedule has been thrown off, it is very difficult to get back on it.

2. Read Up on Your Topic

Writer’s block is the enemy of every writer on a deadline and doubly so for every blogger. Staying on top of your area of interest will help you keep writer’s block to a minimum by feeding you a stream of new ideas.

Subscribe to blogs on a similar subject, subscribe to Technorati Watchlists, Google Blog Search feeds and even Twitter search feeds for your relevant keywords. Read what others are saying and then respond.

This isn’t to say that you should always respond or echo what others are saying, but being part of the conversation means listening. Not only can find news to report on and conversations to join in on, but you can often get great ideas for truly revolutionary stories.

1. Take a Break

For many, burnout is the enemy of blogging. If you feel yourself getting too stressed out about it, take a break from it for a while. If you forward post your articles, your readers may not even know the difference.

Take a weekend away to clear your mind, being sure to leave your laptop behind, and step away from the Web. You have to make sure that blogging is in balance with the rest of your life. If you spend too much time blogging or doing blogging-related activities, you’re going to have to quit to preserve your sanity.

Treat yourself well and don’t let your blog overrun your life. That may be the most important tip to keeping your blog around for the long haul.

Bottom Line

Even if you follow all of these tips, the odds are still stacked against you and your blog. Most blogs close within a few months of opening,

Still, if you take these suggestions, you can at least improve your chances of having a long-running blog and enjoying the audience, personal satisfaction and, possibly, money that comes with it.

Make no mistake, blogging is a lot of work, but if you enjoy it and you make it a routine part of your life, it doesn’t have to feel like a job.

Written by Jonathan Bailey from Plagiarism Today
Posted on May 26th, 2009 and filed under Blogging
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