Blogging is hard work - from A-list to Z-list
Posted by DavidM in Comment | 15 March 2006
Robert Scoble - one of the best known bloggers - wrote yesterday about how much time his blogging takes, and how he can understand why Dave Winer would want to quit. But it's not just the top tier who find it time-consuming.
These guys struggle to keep up with the volume of comments and emails they receive as well as staying on top of their subject when everyone expects them to be the most knowledgable.
But running any level of blog takes time to do properly. The time taken to post regular, thoughtful articles is obvious, but you also need to build and manage your blogroll, read everything about your subject and comment where you've got something to add. If you get traction with readers there is the time for email and comment responses and if you get really big, to do talks, interviews and so on.
For most people blogging is a hobby after a day's work so time blogging has to be balanced with family, friends and other activities. If you put in all this work and get very few readers it's demoralising. If you are one of the few who grow big, it's going to demand much more of your time.
So it's no surprise to hear that the growth in blogs may be slowing or even declining. Looking at the blogroll of 200+ football websites we built when research the Football community, I reckon 10% haven't been updated for at least 2 months, and they were a mix of low and high traffic sites (see the blog ranking article for an example of a big football site dropping out).
It's a long hard slog to make a blog successful, and it's only worth doing if it's something you enjoy. And if you do achieve success, you need to consider changing how you manage it, like Robert, so it doesn't take over your life.
Cheers
David