PureBlogging

How many blogs do you have? 1? 10? Dozens? If you have more than one blog, you may find that your attention is spread thin. Perhaps it’s time to pare down your blogging diet and give up one of your blogs. But how do you know when it’s time to say goodbye and end the relationship with a particular blog? I’ve had about a dozen blogs, only some of which are still active. Here are some of the reasons that I gave up on my old blogs.

1. Interface Problems

Some of my blogs were on blog community sites based on Drupal and other blogging software. I remember that with one particular site, I lasted only four weeks before giving up my blog there. It was just too hard to post there. I would post, and the site would crash or have problems, leaving me postless. After a while I decided that I didn’t need the site enough to keep posting there and I cancelled my account. I was running four other blogs at the time, so it wasn’t a big loss.

2. No Admin Presence

If you are having problems on one of those sites, having someone to help sort the problems out is essential. On at least two of the sites, it was really difficult to get problems sorted out, or even to get a response from the site admin. After a while, I turned my efforts to sites where the admin was involved or where I controlled what happened to my blog.

3. Admin Too Involved

Of course, there are also problems when the admin forgets that the site also belongs to the community. I have blogged on sites where the admin took the site down without warning for a couple of weeks. On another site, the admin decided to change the link structure without putting redirects in place. That meant that I had basically wasted my time promoting my posts on that site. Although my content is still there, I have pretty much stopped posting on that site.

4. No Financial Return

If you are blogging because you want to earn an income, then blogs that don’t make money may be a waste of your time. Of course, you need to give blogs time to develop an audience before you give up on them. However, if no one is interested, then perhaps it’s time to turn your attention elsewhere. A couple of my blogs outgrew their usefulness for that reason, because I was experimenting with them to see what worked.

5. No Mojo

If you can’t be bothered to write about a particular topic, then there’s no point in maintaining a blog about it. You may have been enthusiastic at the start, but if that enthusiasm wanes, then it may be time to call it a day. That doesn’t mean that the blog has to die. Instead you can get some guest bloggers in to handle most of the content, or turn it over to someone who is enthusiastic about the subject matter.

6. No Time

I blog for four sites regularly, and a few more occasionally, and I have three active blogs of my own. That means that blogging time is at a premium, and some of my blogs on other sites don’t get much of my time. If this is happening to you, then maybe it’s time to pare down your blogging life. My decision was to concentrate on my freelance mentoring blog, my professional site and my guest blogging activities, getting to the others when I can. I think that will give me a balanced blogging life.

So those are six reasons to give up on your blog. Next week, I’ll look at some reasons why you should keep your blog going.